
Class ___Ps 
Book T 3 1^ 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



RECREATIONS 



RECREATIONS 



By J. T. 

'Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with 

despair 
Wealth that never yet was but might he — all that verse 

making were 
If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind 

be laid bare. 
So I said 'To do little is bad, to do nothing is 

worse' — 

And made verse." 
(BROWNING: Ferishta's Fancies.) 



'But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his 

separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 

Things as They Are!" 

{KIPLING: The Seven Seas; L' Envoi.) 




^^Knay^nKT^ 



BOSTON 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
1915 



Copyright, 1915, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 



The Gorham Press, Boston. U. S. A. 

DEC 17 1915 

©CU416910 



-:s^ DEDICATION 

Youth or maiden under the blossoming trees. 

What may the breath of my far-off song waft 
youf 

Rather the drowsy hum of the golden bees 
Is young and true. 

Man or woman under the laden boughs. 

Shall my dead words make live the thing you do9 

Rather the summer s voice or your own vows 
May comfort you. 

You happiest ones under the glowing leaves. 

Is mine a flame-tipt song to pierce you through? 

Who knows but your children hear what echo 
grieves 
The hope in youf 

Aged and Lonely under the naked limbs. 

Can my last breath bring in the spring anew? 

Nay, for the winter s mournful breathing dims 
The life on you. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Song of Hell 9 

Maidens i6 

Haunted 17 

The Poet 19 

Found 21 

Out of the Past: 

Then and Now 25 

Exiles 25 

An Idol 27 

Advice from the Gods 27 

The Ivory Gate 28 

In Hades 29 

Psyche 31 

In Egypt 32 

King of Kings 35 

The End 36 

The Pearl Fisher 38 

One Day: 

A Song 52 

Forever 52 

Where ? 53 

In the Garden 54 

Tryst 55 

Despair 56 

Forgotten 57 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Beside the Sea: 

The Calling of the Sea 59 

Chance 59 

In the Field by the Sea 63 

Hope 64 

The Soul 65 

Hail ! 65 

Gnomes'-Gold 66 

Early Summer 67 

To a Bee 68 

To a Wood Sprite 70 

The Marriage of Morning 71 

Books 84 

Reading 86 

Memory Remembered 88 

Flame Kings 90 

Newton 108 

Johann Sebastian Bach 109 

James Clerk Maxwell iii 

A King 112 

William Thompson ; Lord Kelvin 113 

Fata Morgana 114 

Seeking : 

On! 117 

Seek ; Find 117 

Fleeter than Time 118 

Asleep 118 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Pure Light 119 

The Messenger 120 

The Designer 120 

"Ancient of Days" 121 

The Jewel 121 

The Seeker 122 

Posterity 123 

Voices 124 

The Sublime 126 

The Valley of the Shadow 128 

Perchance 133 

Another Day: 

Invitation 134 

Waiting 134 

Weaving 135 

At Dawn 135 

To the Wind 136 

Then 1 36 

Wings 137 

One Pure Gift 138 

In the Fields 138 

They and We 140 

Crystal Vision 141 

The Temple Steps 145 

Under the Trees 151 



RECREATIONS 



A SONG OF HELL 

Past the Cities of the Living, 

Thro' the Ashes of the Dead, 
O'er the Plains of Retribution 

In my dying dream I fled, 
Thro' the Land of Eyeless Weeping, 

Where the raging tears are fire 
And the worm drives out all sleeping 

With his torment of Desire. 

In the sombre Antechamber 

Of the Royal Presence Room, 
I have hailed my haggard brothers 

As they shrink before their doom ; 
And we hear a maiden singing 

With a voice to buy her shame, — 
But the houri's arms are flinging 

Far her gossameres of flame. 

For the King is filled with sorrow. 

And he bids his harem dance, 
While he sinks in dreamy languor 

'Neath the anguish of their glance. 
As their feet are gaily tripping 

Through a maze of utter woe, 
And the streaming flames are stripping 

From their bodies, bare as snow; 

As they dazzle him with whiteness, 
Throwing high their tortured arms. 

Singing with transmuted madness. 
Luring him with hellish charms, 

Writhing in delirious revel. 



Bathed in life, forever drenched 
With the never-ending torments 
Of Desire that's never quenched. 

Who w^ill soothe the King in sadness, 

Who w^ill share his bridal bed, 
Who w^ill drain the bitter gladness 

Steeped in love forever dead? 
Look, his eyes are slowly turning 

To a w^oman's flowing hair. 
Pale the lambent tongues are burning 

Round her face so strangely fair. 

Now his face is grim with passion, — 

Like a death his limbs are set, 
Fast his soul is ebbing from him — 

What will such a love beget? 
Sweeter swells the anguished wailing 

As the semblance of the King 
Into glowing mists is paling 

Hanging in an amber ring: 

Hanging in a ring of amber 

Flames with flickering hearts of red, 
Pulsing with the lust of ages 

Round his bride's abhorrent head; 
Bright the cloud is settling slowly 

Drenching her in shrouds of light. 
She is given to him wholly — 

Love is born in Hell tonight. 

Oh the melody of Chaos 

Shouting loud with thund'rous voice. 
Like the barren winds cavernous. 

When the King has made his choice; 
lO 



Incantations, bowlings, groanings, 
Cursing at an outcast fate, 

Shrieks of spirits, sobbings, moanings, 
Wails of love, and prayers of hate. 

Throbbing, writhing, panting, melting, 

Mingled in unhallowed bliss. 
Hear the ecstacy that's singing 

In the Serpent's stinging hiss, — 
For the King is madly twining 

Like an emerald of fire 
And his jewelled coil is shining 

In the furnace of desire. 

But the Bride is wan with loathing 

And she holds her face aside. 
Feebly thrusting his head backward 

As he tries to kiss his bride; 
See, the coils are crushing closely 

Round her lily breasts of white, 
And her arms are struggling vainly — 

She must lie with him to-night. 

To a bridal couch of embers 

He will drag her shrinking form, 
To that chamber stark with terrors. 

Where the outraged spirits swarm — 
Mock him with his lusts forgotten. 

Call him by his hidden name, 
Holding up the ghouls begotten 

In that bed of nameless shame. 

As her virgin breath is fleeting 

From the tangles of her mate. 
Back she casts a look entreating — 
II 



Blind with horror at her fate, 
Looking as the bird ensnared 

She had freed with her own hands, 
When she walked a care-free maiden. 

Ere she heard the King's commands. 

Oh the wildness of that seeking, 

In the hell of her despair. 
Oh the torn, dishonored beauty. 

And her eyes that wildly stare; 
And the hopeless, pleading terror, 

Streaming with dishevelled hair, 
Meets my soul as in a mirror — 

Binds my soul and holds it there. 

And I see my lost Oenone 

In a second's fleeting glance. 
As my heart is stilled with Beauty, 

In a mufHed, beating trance. 
Dim the Devil's Court is paling 

To a blessed sea-girt land. 
Where we walked at twilight failing. 

Softly singing, hand in hand. 

As the parched plains of Sorrow 

Brood in purple mists away, 
I must live again the morrow 

Of that direful, bitter day. 
When the King had sought her body 

In the daylight growing dim. 
When he lusted for her fairness 

And she gave herself to him. 

Oh the racking of the sobbing 

When she laid her lost soul bare, 
12 



Oh the agony of weeping 

When she told me of the snare 

I can hear a dead sea's silence 

Round a waste of dismal shore — 

Silence of unuttered horror — 
She is His forevermore. 

I can feel forgotten moonlight 

Stealing over sea and hill, 
I can hear her voiceless pleading 

Dumb with grief that will not kill, 
As she chants in maddened raving 

Of a soul that's fled before 
Her where is no shade of saving 

From the King forevermore. 

On my bosom gently rocking 

That dear head of His disgrace. 
Arms around her neck I'm locking 

In one dying, last embrace — 
But her spirit shrinking, fleeting, 

Fleeting, and already flown, 
Greets me with a mystic greeting. 

Greets me with a Word unknown. 

And the Word is past all knowing — 

Past all dreams of mortal ken, 
But I know that Word remembered 

Would bring back her soul again; 
Hark — the Voice is growing clearer, 

Vanished all the tortured years. 
See — her spirit hovers nearer 

And my hair is wet with tears. 



13 



Ah, the dews of night are falling, 

Weeping as they wept of yore, 
And her pleading voice is calling — 

Calling once, to call no more — 
She is speaking — she is speaking — 

God — at last the Word she spoke — 
Hovering near me — will it reach me? 

Oh too late! — The Vision broke. 

She is seeking, she is searching 

As she pants in her despair 
In an agony of hoping, 

And her soul goes mad with prayer: 
But the Word is lost forever 

And all memory is cloud 
In the splendor of Hell's passion 

And the Devil's bridal shroud. 

She has fallen, he is dragging 

Her to chill the Seventh Hell, 
And I shout in exultation — 

I am mad — I loved her well — 
Loved her as my soul forgotten 

In the loveless deaths I've died. 
Loved her in my age-long seeking — 

Loved her as the Devil's bride. 

Swing ye fiends the crimson censers. 

Dash their fire into my eyes. 
Mock with memory remembered, 

Rock my spirit as it lies 
On the solemn billows fretful 

With their sullen, stately swell. 
Till I sink in pain forgetful 

Of a hell within a hell. 
14 



Let me dash on thro' the Ages 

Battling rocks and flames and trees, 
Let me suffer all the torments 

(3f thy loathsomest disease, 
Cursed with life forever springing 

From the charnel of the world, 
Blind with memory of seeing 

Her in outer darkness hurled. 

O Thou God in Heaven creating 

Agonies of Love and Death, 
Breathing loving, breathing hating 

In thy life-inspiring breath, 
Look on thy forgotten plaything — 

Look, thou Devil-God and see 
This thy master-piece of jesting — 

Laugh for all eternity! 



15 



MAIDENS 

Where shall I find you, maiden mine 
Who never yet shone for me, — 

Under the sun of the sea's gold shine- 
There in the dream-dusk sea? 

O radiant maid who never shone 

On beach or sea or foam, 
Only lead me, love my own 

To Dawn's deep crystal home. 

There at last I'll clasp again 

One hand ne'er touched by hands; 

I'll sing the Morning's calm refrain 
No maiden understands. 



i6 



HAUNTED 

'Tis the island wood where you shadowy stood 

On a morn — but long ago, 
Like a startled fawn awakened at dawn 

When the dying night moans low; 
And now you seem but a beautiful dream, 

To lure me with yearning eyes, 
Till the ghostly breeze in these haunted trees 

Dies in remembered sighs. 

Ah, many a year have I sought you here 

And my sea-mates forget to sigh 
In every zone for you alone. 

So I — come here to die; 
No hope was theirs and long despairs 

Billowed their briny years, 
Biit I read in your eyes that hope never dies 

The' a sea may drown in tears. 

Was I other than these? — for the kindly breeze 

Whispered — "She whispers to you" — 
And the morning stir of the restless fir 

Mourned — ''I am grieving for you," 
Till the sundring sound of the tide swept round 

In echoes of sobbing years. 
To rise like the swell of a far-ofif bell 

And answered — "Have done with fears." 

Oh, the charm and grace of your vanished face 
Were the lure and the life of a soul, 

And the surging strife of a haunted life 
Was the dream in the restless roll 

Of the sea as it read from the scroll of the dead, 



17 



And in storm this word again — 
"She bids you speak, tho' your soul be weak 
Lost love is never in vain." 

Where the mad ships reel on storm-bared keel 

O'er the ghost of a dream-locked sea, 
The lost winds shriek their whistling "Speak! — 

Speak, ah speak to me!" 
But the wild refrain of the winds in pain 

Is the sea with a sorrowing plea. 
For its restless roll is your yearning soul 

Slumbering down in the sea. 

With every breath we prayed for death 

From cities and seas and kings. 
But ever your eyes, where the hope never dies, 

Have urged me to better things; 
I am weary now, and your pale, wan brow 

Seems weary of thought as mine. 
Oh ease my brain from its maddening pain — 

Madder than maddest wine. 

Are you only a dream in the fleeting gleam 

Of a morn that never was real; 
Are your yearning eyes, where the love never dies. 

Still mute in their sweet appeal? 
Is your shadowy isle but a mist to beguile 

The weary ships that seek 
To find you again — and wearier men — 

Speak, for I cannot speak. 



i8 



THE POET 

Cold, cold is the dew upon his hair, 

Far, far the stars above his careless head, 

And silence everywhere 
Hushes, hushes all he would have said: 

He is not dead! 
Lo! — There he wanders, touching first a star, 

Then a lily's dewy cheek; — 
Hear a marvel! — Sundered aeons afar 
The petals' frailty from yon raging Sun 
He made them one 
(This thing all lilies know,) 
So long ago; — could she but speak 

Then would she tell us so: 
How long ago! yet this has ever been, 

Before his hour it was; it is; 
And still the word that crowned her queen 
Of stars and flowers was only his; 

Had he not sung 
The magic of the mind had never wed 
This child of heaven and distant hell, — 

Man's dusty tongue 
Denying Night her unseen diadem 
Had said, "Be ye apart, and twain 

O Star and starrier flower." 
Only he has married them 
Forever, his the mystic spell 
Above their airy bed; 
Their bridal chamber is the mind 
Of aeons, his the little hour 
Outlasting ruined Time. It was not vain — 

Though he be dead — 
The lightning thought that struck all ages blind 
A vivid instant, — he 
19 



Is writ forever on the brow of things 
For years and men to see; 
And, though no more he sings 
Or fires a sodden clay, he is. 
That flash is he; 
Nor shall he perish utterly 
Or ever, till all Time is his 
And is no more; till Death o'erwhelm 
Imagination's everlasting realm — 
Usurp strong Reason's throne, 
And make the end of All his own. 



20 



FOUND 

Where is the Kingdom of Happiness hidden, 
Under what crags do its seven gates glow, 
Over what breeze do its banners flow, 

Down what ravine or pathway forbidden? 

I asked a bride and she answered me, 
"Our land of love is the hiding place, 
There is all joy's abiding place; 

Our valleys are bright for all to see." 

"Come," I said, to the bridegroom, "hither; 

Are the words of your love the voice of truth?" 
"Our meadows are green with the waters of 
youth, 

And the Kingdom is here where no buds wither." 

They saw the banners; I turned to a maid, 

"What flowers are those you tenderly cherish?" 
"Dreams I have culled lest my longing perish, 

But harsh is the way. and I grow afraid." 

A boy by her side was smitten with wonder, 
"A silly girl and her dreams may wilt," — 
And he shook his sword by its jewelled hilt, 

"I will capture the Kingdom with all its plunder." 

He was lost; so I questioned one grown rich, — 
"The Kingdom lies by a golden mountain ; 
By a Sea whence gushes a silver fountain 

I will ease my palm's and my fingers' itch." 



21 



No guides were these, and I sought the roses; 
"Where, sweet friends, does the Kingdom lie?" 
They hung their heads with a fragrant sigh, — 

"In our hearts, where the soul of the noon un- 
closes." 

Baffled, I turned to a gem-eyed toad, — 

"You who blink, w^as the fair truth spoken?" 
"No," he croaked, "if my head be broken 

You'll see the way, — a jewel-strewn road." 

"Philosopher- toad I will none of your jesting. 
But I like your cult," — and I stopped a sage; 
"The path," said he, "is a printed page. 

And the wars unwon are truth's grim wresting." 

He gave me a wonderful book as guide. 

Its words were tears, its letters were laughter. 
And I read, "Thou shalt find the Kingdom here- 
after," 

As I closed the book with Night at my side. 

Then I felt the awe of her windy tresses, 

"Are the jewels on your hair the Kingdom's 

lights?" 
"Nay," and her voice was low, "but Night's": 

And she touched my brow with a dream's caresses. 

Lost at dawn on the mountain-tops 

I questioned a spectre, "Speak what place is 
This where the shades hide tear-stained faces?" 

"Heaven; and our tears are the small dew-drops." 

"The Kingdom of Joy?" I asked another 

Whose face was wet, and he answered "yea;" 
"Let this be truth, I'll not gainsay, 

But who was that other?" He said, "my brother." 

22 



A lonely ghost went wandering there, 

His eyes were dry but his face ungladdened; 
**Why, for you, is Paradise saddened?" 

"I strove for happiness, earned despair." 

"Come," I urged, *'let us seek together; 
These are the crags, and God's fair town 
Is below;" as I turned to lead him down 

There fell at my feet an angel's feather. 

Proudly we turned our backs on the sky, 

Through the day's long heat our souls grew 

meeker ; 
"Harsh," groaned he, "is the way of the seeker;" 

"Let us wait for Night," I said, "and die." 

"Let us search no more though its gates be seven, 
I weary," he wept, "and joy would kill ;" 
So we laid us down with a ready will 

Under the mystical silver of heaven. 

"Lo!" he cried, "'tis the seventh gate!" 

As he leaped with youth at the sudden wonder, 
For tlie barren crags were rent asunder. 

And the Keeper smiled, "You come, though late." 

My ghostly friend, his whole face shining 

Brighter than morning's, cried, "How strange! 
Your weariness glows with a wonderful change ;" 

And I laughed, "O Soul, 'tis your own designing." 

Then we roamed the meadows in calm content. 
Where the roses bloomed, their petals unclosing 
Over the gold of a noon reposing 

Fair as a god with his youth unspent. 

23 



I nudged my friend and he shook with glee, 
For under a bush lay an old man sleeping, 
And a toad on his head sat solemnly keeping 

Watch o'er a dewdrop's tiny sea. 

But who walked yonder, bashfully smiling? 
The hilt in her hand, the flowers in his hair 
I knew, and he mourned with a mock-despair, 

"Broken, alas, by a maid's beguiling." 

We journeyed on through the golden gloaming 
Slowly happy to Night's bright land ; 
And we saw them wandering, hand in hand, 

The Bride and Groom to their last long homing. 

Then Night looked down from unsoundable eyes. 
And my friend glanced backward, his face for- 
getful. 
The sound of his voice far-off, regretful — 

"How sad is joy when the last grief dies: 

Ah, where alas, is Happiness hidden. 

Are the seven gates but the doors of a tomb — 
Over each portal the terrible doom: 

' To some who enter am I forbidden ?' " 



24 



OUT OF THE PAST 

THEN AND NOW 

Fair flower of pagan days, 
Who has not sung thy praise 
Remembering thee? 

Proud bloom on yonder Sea, 

Where shines thy Land 
Aflower so distantly? 

Is that wide welter spanned, 
(Could we but understand) 
By bridge of dreams? 

Afar the white cliff gleams — 

Still foam its base, — 
Our beach! so near it seems. 

Put forth and find that Place 
Beyond all time, all space. 
Beyond the Sea. 

EXILES 

Land of the Morning!* memory's realm, 

Magical vale no care may take 
Or Grief's gray hordes o'erwhelm — 

We are thy children still: 
Though we wander far from the breezy brake 

Under the glow of thy golden hill — 



*(Note: Ur of the Chaldeans; sometimes (in the 
cuneiform writings,) The Garden of Eden.) 

25 



(Alas that we left so soon, so soon) 

We shall never forget 
Our last cool drink from the little rill, 
Or the rose we took for thine own dear sake, 
And the few white jessamine stars, to set 

Only with thy last moon. 

There flowed a river slowly down. 

Thyme its banks, where velvety bees 
Tumbled from cup to crown. 

Oh! but so long ago! 
There was trumpet-vine on the poplar trees 

Seen afar in its scarlet glow 
(Oh whisper not that it shines no more!) 

Do the bees still haunt the thyme, — 
Where are those lizards we used to know 
Sunning themselves in lazy ease; 
Does our wild clematis boldly climb 

Those rocks it loved of yore? 

Under my pillow I'll hide a rose, 

(No jessamine flower or thyme grows here) ; 
In the first swift sleep e'er eyelids close 

Undreaming, I'll see Thee again; 
Still is the air and crystal clear, 

Far away shines a silver plain — 
Land of the Morning! glowing afar 

Pure as a jewel on Time's bright brow 
Undimmed as ever by life's dull rain, 
We have remembered thy happiness, Dear, 
And we shall forget thee — hear our vow — 

Only with thy last star. 



26 



AN IDOL 

Prisoned in granite bonds 
Huge stone you have waited for me 
For a million years of years 
That my hand might set you free. 

Cursed Idol, inhumanly grim 
You have watched the Stars and God ; 
No more shall you gaze on Him 
Or the Stars when I shatter you. 

Cold in your frozen sneer, 
Dumb as your sullen tongue, 
You have heard the wails of men 
And every hope they've sung. 

God and Stars, cold stone 
Shall judge me for what I do; 
Not you shall see them alone 
When men sink under the earth. 

So I shatter your brow to dust 
And bury you deep in this cave ; 
No more shall you see the Stars 
Till your dust is mankind's grave. 

ADVICE FROM THE GODS 

What profits? — Wine in a golden bowl, 
Garments of grape-red flame, 
Or flesh far sweeter than grapes 
Enticing to daintier shame, — 
Or love in alluring shapes — 
What profits these things, our Soul? 
27 



Disgust, our lust-drugged youthful fool; 
Passion slinks out when reason goes; 
That breast all yours is a marble thing, 
That flower in her hair a rotting rose 
And drunkard's discords those hymns you sing 
To your harlot goddess, most truthful fool. 

Passions kiss not your weakling men, 
Infinite lust not theirs; 
Painless kisses are only ours 
Whose body no mortal shares; — 
Men, your vices wither as flowers. 
Be monks, grow weeds again. 

THE IVORY GATE 

Over the shimmering endless plain 

Stark with its rocks and sand. 
Under a sky that weeps no rain 

To bless the desert land. 
The white-winged birds fly on with pain 

In a stricken, hopeless band; 
When will they find their Sea again 

And sweep thro' the foam on the strand? 

Steel is the hills' inscrutable blue 

In a hard and changeless guile. 
Eternally old, and eternally new 

With a smile of fathomless wile; 
It is guarding the vale of shadows and dew 

As the birds fly on the while. 
And they hail thes hills — ''Does your Pass 
lead thro' 

To the green of our blessed isle?" 

28 



But never an answering word as they wing 

The titan passes, bound 
For their happy isles, white-blossoming 

Beyond the crashing sound 
Of curling waves on a coraled ring, 

Encircling homelands round. 
With waving palms, where others sing — 

But these are homeward bound. 

Droop the wearily fluttering wings — 

Death will come too late, 
Down a pass a messenger brings 

News of the Ivory Gate — 
Set as a bar by the Mountain Kings, 

Slaves of remorseless Fate: 
Fold the dusty, useless wings, 

Brokenly desolate. 

Blindly, wearily, one by one. 

They beat the tracery rare. 
Ivory carved by Fate's blind Son — ■ 

Strong, and wonderfully fair. 
Till one by one, their journey done, 

They yearn in last despair 
For all they see — the sky, the sun, 

The foam, and heaven's free air. 

IN HADES 

/ Proserpine 

Not I may pluck thee, vanished Rose, 
Or cull thy dream with chilly hand, 

Remembered love forever knows 
The Borderland. 

29 



What though I haunt the Stygian sand- 
I may not pluck thee, vanished Rose; 

The Borderland 

Is Pluto's realm; afar he throws. 

His dreams to cloud with wild repose 

The Borderland; 
Not I may pluck thee, vanished Rose — 

Ah, why, thy love can understand. 

The Borderland 

Shall pale to His eternal close; 
Alas, I hear his dread command 

I may not pluck thee, vanished Rose. 

// Pluto 

Alas, I hold her earthier soul, 
Her airy love may still repine; 

I reft her from the grassy knoll — 
She is not mine. 

For her the air is yet divine 
I hold, alas, her earthier soul; 

She is not mine, 

Nor may hell ever make her whole; 

My sultry thunders angered, roll — 

'She is not mine:' 
Alas, I hold her earthier soul — 

A crystal cup without the wine. 

She is not mine; 

Although I take her journey's toll, 
Her backward glance is but the sign 

I hold, alas, her earthier soul. 
30 



PSYCHE 

By the shimmering poplars and beeches, 

Alilt to the laughing breeze, 
Where whispers the wind on the reaches 

Of wolds by the well-loved trees, 
I caught you, my Psyche, and kissed you, 
And then, dear spirit, I missed you — 

Frail Psyche, my wayward tease. 

But the tears rippled low in your laughter. 
As your wings glanced merrily on, 

And your dream-eyes shadowed "hereafter"- 
Poor butterfly, where have you gone? 

Sweet friend of the summers and swallows, 

Have you fluttered where no Spring foUows- 
In the Land of Thither and Yon? 

Were you then all mocking and smiling, 

Not a heart behind it all ? 
Was it love, or an hour's beguiling 

That bound me your willingest thrall? 
Yet you answered my wild entreating, 
Dear dream, with your dances fleeting, 

But now, I call, and call. 

In my dreams I fondle your tresses 
And feel your wings on my cheek 

With a butterfly's dream of caresses, 
Oh Psyche, where shall I seek? — 

I rise, and the meadows are dreary. 

And the breeze in the beeches grow weary, — 
Ah Psyche, the wolds are bleak! 



31 



Oh Psyche come back to your lover — 
Lost Psyche with the sun-kissed wings, 

Come back to the beeches, and hover 
O'er hollows where summer sings 

All day with the chirping of crickets 

And care-free birds of the thickets — 
Come back where the blue-bell rings! 

IN EGYPT 

/. his 

The jackal prowls thy courts by night, the owl 
Flits silent by; thy fountain writhes for breath 
With strangling weeds and living things most foul, 
And thy High Priest is sacrileged in death — 
A chattle in the hands of strawless slaves 
To make a vandal show before the mob ; 
O anguished Outcast, rend these ghouls who rob 
Thy ravished shrines and violated graves! 

The dreamy lotus lilies lift and fall 
Upon the slumbering waters, as when Thou 
Wast Goddess^ — their frail might outlasting thine; 
But thro' the whispering reeds I hear Thee call 
My Soul — my Goddess then, my Goddess now — 
I'll lay a lotus on thy broken shrine. 

//. Loti 

Weep! thou Nile, for we are loti, fair 
Tho' Egypt mourns; O must we ever know 
Thy meres and shallow places? Long ago 
We wove a million crowns for fragrant hair 
Of priestesses, that knew not any care 

32 



Save pain of love; and now, we deck thy slow 

Unending stream, remorseless in its flow 

By tombs and palaces where grim despair 

Dreams not of love. O Isis, Horus, lone 

In heaven's unending solitude, but hear 

Thy purple playthings on the waters moan 

What once was prayer, — when we were thy most 

dear 
Fond worshippers; ah, do not now disown 
Our pleading when the very noon is drear. 

III. Memnon 

Huge pylons, stark in man-outlasting might, 
And grim colossi stalk the sandy plain 
Where giant Memnon, brooding still in vain 
This ancient wrong of time, awaits the light 
That Ra shall send to banish Egypt's night; 
He hymns vain monotones of praise again — • 
A witness to his god's eternal reign. 
The sire of Night in Day, and Wrong in Right. 

The priest, and suppliants who bow to priest, 
Lie down in equal dust; lo, all the throng 
That drave the hecatomb of bulls to feast. 
Are one with their dead cattle; then, how long 
Shall this dead thing of stone still face the East, 
And unmolested drone its empty song? 

IV. Karnak 

Egyptian suns have loomed thy wondrous walls 
In shadowed hieroglyph of Kings' decay 
Across the waste these thousand years, and they 
Have marched with Empire's pomp where night ap- 
pals 

33 



Wan images of day, in vaster halls 
Than thine: thy graven glories pass away 
With this dead sun, and all thy hallowed sway 
Of shaven priests, where no last prayer recalls 

Thy vanished God to bless their darkened shrine. 
O mighty in thy sculptured pride, and strong 
With love of Gods, — Time's grudging grant was 

thine — 
To strive to conquer plundering man so long 
As men fanatic humble things divine — 
Another's gods; — this was thy shameless wrong. 

V. The Pyramids 

The vanity of Kings was ours, and lust 

Of pride in death, upreared to mock the dead 

With everlasting stone; — the nameless dread 

That rulers sink in age-forgotten dust 

Is ours, and all the wealth of gilded trust 

Queens put in us, is dross; the humbled head 

Of tyrant bows to slave, — his glory fled 

Where gleaming spears that kinged him, rot in rust. 

Sarcophagi, and chambered death are vain 
As is the echoed boast of them that made 
Our mighty mass, obsessing Egypt's plain 
Of silent sand, all voiceless, undismayed 
By pigmy threats of men : O turn again, 
Thou child of stony death, and be afraid. 

VI. The Sphynx 

Eternal silence is my voice, the Sand 
My dead dominion; buried men and bones 
My woman's sacrifice, and harsher stones 

34 



My taunting sneer to urge my grim command: — 
"Thirst ye to know, but never understand 
My snarling silence:" thus thy life atones 
The ignorance my age-worn smile disowns 
In thee, encumberers of this, my Land. 

All knowledge lives within my cheating tomb, 
Life is its sepulchre, and death thy wage, 
I suck thee down in silent fear and gloom 
Of sands remorseless as the simoon's rage; 
And endless thirst — this is, O Man, thy doom, 
Athirst, athirst! assuage who would assuage. 

KINGS OF KINGS 

Ye reared me towers of stone, and walls of gem, 

Chalcedony and topaz, emerald 

And rubies, — then a thorned diadem 

Ye wove my brows, when sated men beheld 

The vanity of gold and dust of stone: 

Ye shadowed all the clouds with boast of light 

To cheat thy misery, and still the moan 

Ye made by day, false hoping in my night — 

But never dwelt I there. For I, the shade 

Of all ye cannot be, creep slow across 

The changing dial of minds, I changeless rise 

And set, and rise again, calm, undismayed 

By groping seekers lost, — for Man's the loss 

In dawn; — I heed not when his crying dies. 

A thousand names ye gave me; worlds before 
Ye mouthed, or carved an image gravely dumb, 
I knew and mocked them all; for as the sower 
Knows that weeds and ranker tares must come 
With summer, thus 1 saw the fruitless crop 
Of all thy prayers, ere words were sown to choke 
Thy silence; nor can all thy tears unstop 

35 



My wells of pity for thy idols broke 
And wasted like the winds. In life they knew 
Me not, — nor ever hoped to know ; so ye 
Have cast thy faith on death, that fickle reed 
My mind has made to pierce thee; ye endue 
My greater shadow, dark to shadowed thee 
With life; pray ye to Time, he cannot heed. 

Deep in a buried forest, beyond the Sea 
Undreamed, my Temple's cloud-hewn pallor looms 
In soundless majesty all shadowy. 
My slumbering winds are drugged with heavy 

blooms 
Of deadly night-flowers, dark with age-worn light 
' From brooding blood-red moons, chill sabled thro' 
The noiseless-echoed aisles, and Giant Night 
Stalks huge in mists of dull Lethean dew. 
Oblivion's ocean rolls around my walls. 
But Sleep, with sombre web, builds low the ghosts 
Of stoneless bridges, dark and dawn-forgot. 
That ye may cross my flood and yearn in halls 
Of Silence, wan with gray, unnumbered hosts 
That seek the face of Death, and find me not. 

THE END 

Down the meadows came one singing. 
His hair was as wind on the skies, 

Dow^n the azure rushed one bringing 
Light in his fast shut eyes; 

Then I rose in my grave, I said — 

Shall a blind god wake the dead? 



36 



Far by the stars a lone god wandered, 
No wind swept night from the skies; 

Lonely there an old god pondered — 
Black were his blazing eyes; 

Then I lay in my grave and said, 

Can a dead god see the dead? 



37 



THE PEARL FISHER 

Winds, if ye know voices, Sea, if thou a calling, 
Ocean, if thou aught of message hast to hail Her, 
Let the waves and all their demon's chill enthrall- 
ing 
Bind Her fleeting shadow, let no gods avail Her 
In the mastery of death. 

Let Iter choke and strangle in Her waters, fighting 
breath. 

All Her magic swells this rolling of the billows, 
She has lured the living, land-loved rivers hither 
From their blossomed banks and silver pollard wil- 
lows, 
Lured them, promised that Her blooms can never 

wither, 
Here, where all is waving weeds. 
Fadeless lilies, rocks and standing pools and yel- 
low reeds. 

I have dwelt in sea-deep cities all these ages 

Since the deeper time-forgotten day she lured me 

deeper 
For Her Pearls, and still above the waters rages 
Wilderness of sorcery, and still the sleeper 
Dreams of pearls, to find them here, — 
Sleeps and dreams, to find a Pearl than all more 

baleful dear. 

All the lands of Tyre and Sidon held no fairer 
Love and face than my Sidonia's; never lover 
Dreamed a vision like to her, nor poet rarer 
Loveliness, and all her longing seemed to hover 
Breathless wafted on my mouth 
Close pressed to hers, with rapture soft as winds 
that love the South. 

38 



So when our troth was sealed, you turned with 

winsome jesting — 
"Dive for pearls, for queenly pearls; bring love a 

token 
Of your love, bring me the Queen of all the Pearls, 

in testing 
Of your faith, to weave a chaplet; if it broken 
Ever be, to fall before 
My feet, so that I tread the pearls, our love shall 

live no more." 

I stood above the prow, and that last look you sent 
me 

From the shore was love before the Deep, then 
poising 

O'er the wave, I plunged; Oh could your eyes tor- 
ment me 

Down those haunted waters, where dull pulsed nois- 
ing ^ 

Throbs thro' bursting ears and brain — 

Did they stare upon me, never to behold again? 

"Dive for Pearls" — down, down to mottled glitter 
Bright on rocks and ocean lichens far below me; 
Slowly moved the weeds, but ever forth in bitter 
Sway of salty flow, there causeways glowed to show 

me 
Where Her amber palace lay. 
Seemed to wave me on with slow and melancholy 

sway. 

Pearls I promised, My Sidonia, from the water 
You had loved, pearls I dived for, — could I find 

them 
Save their Queen befriended me? So I sought Her 

39 



Down ocean's meadows where Her mermaids fond- 
ly twine them 

Thro' a slow and mazy dance — 

Gazing round them, twining with insinuating 
glance. 

To Her palace, vaulted high with halls of amber, 
Soft aglow with sun and amythest, I wandered — 
To Her door of pearl where crimson sea weeds 

clamber 
O'er the gleaming, trellised walls with riot-squan- 
dered 
Wealth luxuriant of bloom — 

Shading opal wonders of Her domes and presence 
room. 

Slowly waved the weeds aside and gleaming tresses 

Floated where I stood, till all the sea shone golden. 

And I heard the infamy of soft caresses 

Wafted in my ear, so knew I was beholden 

In loving serfdom to the Queen — 

Pale in palaces of amber, jade and waters green. 

O'er Her crystal floor with noiseless feet I hurried 
To a vast and shining room where She was holding 
Court, enthroned 'mid mermaids' beauty, hidden 

buried 
Deep from eyes of prying man in waters' folding 
Shroud of mystery, and all 
Her throng seemed waiting for a man to lift the 

silent pall. 

Oh Sidonia, true Sidonia, She had shaken 
All my bounden love for you; She was fairer. 
Fair Sidonia, than the lotus buds that waken 
Frail on dawning waters, and Her lips were rarer 

40 



Red than reddest Chlan wine, 
And Her eyes were veiled as cloudy moons that 
dimly shine. 

Long the Tyrian barques and all their crews have 

vanished, 
Long their divers waited for the little bubbling 
Bells of air; long, ah long have I been banished 
Far from worlds where love with all his joyous 

troubling 
Flits the shore on searching wings, 
Seeking lovers strayed on ever turnless wanderings. 

Oh Sidonia, sad Sidonia, wandering lonely 

Thro' yon flowery waste, how I loved and loathed 

Her, 
Passionlessly fish, and wanton woman only 
In -Her lust, what time she hotly draped and clothed 

Her 
With ocean's pearls and woman's weeds — 
I loved to hear Her lure my soul to loveless, shame- 
less deeds. 

"Thou a man art fair, and all thy days are num- 
bered, 

Henceforth in our opalescent sheen of twilight 

Here where dreams of broken loves have ever slum- 
bered, 

Comforted from all the woes of brooding daylight. 

Loving never one but Me — 

Loving not the blossomed land that mourns above 
my Sea." 

She had won the man in me, and all my baser 
Clay, but oh Sidonia, how the God with longing 

41 



Rebelled, and held your soul with sweetness to 

deface Her 
Foulest travesty of flesh, and all Her mermaids 

thronging 
Sinuously human, 
Half a scaled fish, and half a yearning woman. 

Far ad own the soundless aisles of weedstrewn water 
Seemed to steal a throb of distant, lonely weeping — 
"Oh woe is me, for my unworthy sake you sought 

Her 
In Her pearly caves, and Death has now your keep- 
ing 
Cold in gloomy caverns; woe. 
Oh woe is me, I'd seek for you, but whither shall I 
go? 

Then I rose and cursed Her couch of swinish lust- 
ing, 
Left Her barren as the stones and rocks that perish 
Atom after atom barrenly; and trusting 
In your trust, I laggard turned again to cherish 
Love late scorned and cast away — 
Too late, for She arose to blight me, haggard, ashen 
gray ; 

Baleful in Her thwarted lust, Her words unspoken 
Dropped like pearls of vitriol thro' the seething 

water : 
"Men have loved the Queen 'ere this and ruthless 

broken 
Her fond, yielding heart, men have ever sought 

Her, 
Crushed and cast Her heart aside — 
Many so have wooed and won Her soul a willing 

bride ; 

42 



Bitter bread of love, more bitter wine of passion 
These are Her overthrow, all Her wild despair- 
ing 
Sings in siren voices, so the changeless fashion 
Of man the mariner o'er loving waters faring 
May turn and pity Her despair — 
To turn again and curse Her that She was so foul- 
ly fair; 

She will not rend or sear their bodies, souls are 

sweeter 
Agonies to contemplate, soft flesh may wither, 
Lose all hues of pain, so men that turn, find love 

and greet Her 
Tho' they long to turn again and get them thither, 
There they may not wend anew, 
But wander here forever, silent tortured thro' and 

thro' : 

Ever gaze they on Her Mirror, held before them 
Where'er they turn, and read the days of pale de- 
sires, 
They see the silent tears of loves that still adore 

them. 
Burn their hollow flesh with slow decay of smoul- 
dering fires, 
They yearn for love, and hate Her lust, — 
Man longs to leave Her, but ever shall return till 
man is dust. 

Pearls that shine thro' Ocean's deepest caves are 

dowered 
Mortal, on thy earthly love, fair as gleams the 

morning 
Slanted thro' our halls of amythest; deflowered 

43 



Shall all our gardens be, to blossom her as warn- 
ing 

Mortals who despoil the Sea, 

She shall wear them, and wearing give thy soul to 
Me. 

Gaze, O man of Upper Air, on Me and wonder 
On my loveliness that blooms down here forever. 
Gaze, I give thy mortal pearls, and rend asunder 
Love of her pure soul forever, thou shalt never 
Gaze upon her flesh again — 
Gaze O mortal, for thy agony shall be in vain." 

Ah Sidonia, lost Sidonia, She has lured 
Me deeper, downward, ever deeper, and the magic 
Oh Her mirror is a pain that cannot be endured ; 
Silence, seeing, — seeing, silence, all the tragic 
Mystery of soundless deeds 

Haunts me, holds me, mocks me thro' Her livid, 
living weeds. 

Far above I heard the waves shout hoarse with 

thund'rous 
Bellowings of wrath, like some huge monster foiled 
Of all his rushing prey of waters, soft the won- 
drous 
Hope of Upper Air was wan thro' weeds despoiled 
Of purple clustered wealth of blooms 
Torn late away to grace Her cursed halls and brid- 
al rooms. 

Forth alone I wandered, adown vast ocean avenues, 
Ominously peaceful, and beheld before me 
The wonder of a Mirror imaged not with Sea- 
views, 

44 



Round, and crystal void, its polished surface bore 

me 
Not in countenance or form, 
But floated on, till suddenly, acloud with shadowed 

storm 

It writhed and throbbed in Nature's tortured rend- 
ing, 

There I saw a sand of desert lashed in awful splen- 
dor — 
Of simoon-billowed shrouds and palm oasis blend- 
ing 

O'er my lost Sidonia, — *'Gods of Tyre defend her, 

Oh Gods destroy her agony — 

For I am powerless here in thy accursed, silent sea." 

O Moloch, all thy molten stones and iron were 
cooler 

Than these waters' seething, moveless hell; and 
fairer 

Thou, Medusa, than Her Mirror, when my Ruler 

Makes all void : Oh ! would winds and waves en- 
snare Her 

In Her strangling weeds, control 

Her breath unnatural, smother, stifle all Her soul. 

Ever from my sight the buoyant round receded, 
Now a pictured second's hell, and now a dreariness 
Of empty ills imagined : how I moaned and pleaded 
Oh, my wan Sidonia for you, till a weariness 
O'ercame my speech and froze me dumb, 
Motionless of limbs awaiting nameless woes to 
come. 



45 



Death and Life, despair and joy, strove but to 

master 
Only you within Her Mirror, sadly drooping 
Like a lotus wilted: Oh, might but Death outlast 

Her 
In the end, and could I see you gently stooping 
Down from Heaven, with loving thought 
To raise me, all these tortured ages were as empty 

nought. 

Fond Sidonia, long you mourned me, long your 

weeping 
Drops of heavenly rain woke Mirrored spring of 

sympathy ; 
Long you trusted, till your tears another's keeping 
Stopped forever, with a lone and lasting misery, 
That may not weep, but alway hide 
A secret sadness for a loneliness that shall abide. 

How I longed and strove, and vainly prayed to 

warn you 
Of the deadly, bitter fruit of that espousal, mocking 
With its barrenness of earthy love to scorn you 
Thro' eternal ages, and the future rocking 
Tearless, armlocked, of a grief 
Forever doomed to smile, and reft of silent tears' 

relief. 

But Her Mirror showed you roaming thro' the 

wildly 
Calm and lovely Tyrian gardens, with another 
Wooing lover, and you gazed on him all mildly — 
I had perished — O Astarte, Tyrian mother. 
Guide her, guide, guide her now — 
She has neither friend nor lover, only Mother, 

Thou. 

46 



Slow you turned on him a strange regard of haunted 
Melancholy, slow you seemed to prove his pleading 
In that leaden look: till rude arose and taunted 
All his visioned love, and wounded memory bleed- 
ing 
New, remembered love of me, 
And I saw your semblance lorn thro' coldly vast 
eternity. 

Down thro' voiceless waters came the sound, ca- 
resses 

Wing upon the air: tho' you dreamed "Hereaf- 
ter"— 

In his loathly touch, still the head that presses 

On your bosom now — is his, and lover's laughter 

His forever; seek, ah fair 

Sidonia, not my cold soul in heaven, it cannot enter 
there. 

Oh the dreary days of Mirrored life were sadder 

Far than languid song of hopeless birds grown 
tired 

By golden bars confined ; thy hidden struggles mad- 
der 

Far than theirs, or e'er the broken soul aspired 

To beat love's hallowed air, a chain 

Of hope or dreaded duty drew it bounden down 
again. 

Oft you wandered lone at night along resounding 
Shores of many moonlight lands, sore distressed 
Of brow and heart at Ocean's portents fell abound- 
ing 
On the brooded beach, your senses rich oppressed 
With wealth of weighty pearls, strewn 

47 



Beneath your feet, the Sea Queen's gift glowing 
with the moon. 

Endless leagues across the void of stony ocean 
Floor I followed Her mirage, and sought to greet 

you 
Where you stood in agony of still devotion 
With a love that dared not words; could I meet 

you 
There? for I was doomed to roam 
Unheard and lost beneath the waves' white wilder- 
ness of foam. 

Kind Remorse, prolong thy pangs, devouring me 

forever. 
Let me live those Mirrored hours again, disdain me 
Not to suffer, and triumphant let me sever 
Memory of him, her spouse, nor restrain me 
In thy agony, so I 
Forget that still he loves her, and that I can never 

die. 

Lost Sidonia, dead Sidonia, could he follow 
You beyond the tomb? For I saw you thither 
Yearn with joyful sighs; wan Sidonia, hollow 
Grew your eyes, and lo, I saw your roses wither 
In their loveliness; cloud 

O'erswept your brow; and all your bridal raiment 
fell a shroud. 

Hot as glowing coals the asphodel of Heaven 
Burned your pilgrim feet, as ever on you sought me 
Thro' the desert meadows, up and down the seven 
Heavens, singing softly lovers' songs you taught 
me, 

48 



To recall my wayward soul, 

Trusting, calling, hoping that your love could make 
me whole. 

Sore bewildered, baffled soul confused with aching 
Misery, you climbed the languorous slopes immortals 
Roamed upon, till all outwearied, hope forsaking 
Down by sunless floods you sought the dusky por- 
tals 
Of the underdeath, with fear 

And hope to find me there: The Shadow Halls 
were barren drear. 

Thence thro' voiceless, vast abysses where the star- 
light 
Never shines to bound high solitude, cast away 
Upon the soundless crumbling shores of Time, 

where a death-blight 
Brooded over dawnless chasms, soon a wild dismay 
Seized upon your soul, to rend and tear 
Your inmost being out, for Love had never wander- 
ed there. 

Back to hated paradise you stole to wait him. 
Your appointed mate for galling love eternal: 
Oh that Hell would yawn and open to unmate him. 
So that he enwound with heaven's vernal 
Flowers should groping fall to jaws 
Of death, to drown where fire with sullen roar of 
flame withdraws. 

Now, Sidonia, you are mourning, silent stroking 
Back his loathed immortal hair, with writhes of 

laughter. 
While the Mirror still I follow, wild invoking 

49 



Gods and friends to bless me blind, or kinder, waft 

Her 
Death on carrion wings; but She 
Is still enthroned, and shall be all eternity. 

Still the Queen enwreathes me with Her fadeless 

roses, 
Still She haunts my soul with melodies of dreaming 
Lover's music, and Her luring form reposes 
Lithe on languid lilies, fair in seeming. 
Culled from some deep ocean dell — 
False in their perfume, ensnaring as the fumes of 

hell. 

Dazed I gaze in wonder, gloat Her face and beauty, 
Strange, unnatural, till faint with loathing terror 
I turn and flee from out Her halls of cursed duty; 
Then Her wrath of injured lust recalls the Mirror, 
Brings me tortured back to gaze 
Anew upon Her awful splendor, yielding in amaze. 

Granite grey are now Her eyes that once were 
azure. 

Hemlock were a sweeter draught than all the nectar 

Of Her clinging kiss, and endless toils were pleas- 
ure 

Dearer than Her fond embrace, when She has deck- 
ed Her 

Lust in pearls and loving weeds. 

To riot wild in orgy of Her shameless passion's 
deeds. 

"Dive for pearls," you said, Sidonia, "Dive," I 
found them, 

50 



Here, I found the Queen of All the Pearls, and 

wooed Her; 
She was kind, and gave you pearls. Herself she 

wound them 
Round your bosom ; nor have wanton I withstood 

Her 
In Her loving kindness; I 
Am Hers forever, and Her chosen loves may never 

die. 

Winds, if ye know voices. Sea, if thou a calling. 
Ocean, if thou aught of message to hail Her, 
Let the waves and all their demon's grim enthrall- 
ing 
Bind Her fleeting shadow: let no gods avail Her 
In the mastery of Death, 

Let Her choke and strangle in Her waters, fight- 
ing breath. 



51 



ONE DAY 



A SONG 



Clear is the evening star 

With a still, sad light, 

But the eyes of my love are clearer 

Than crystal spheres of night. 

Compassionate from afar 
The star is chill and drear, 
More merciful, and nearer 
My love alone is dear. 

Sad as the evening star 

With the sins and the sorrows of men — 

My beloved's eyes are dearer 

To one w^ho errs again. 

I have worshipped my love from afar 
With her clear kind eyes — 
No love of mine shall sear her 
Till yonder seraph dies. 

FOREVER 

The Suns may wheel and madly reel 

To wrack forevermore 
So Love's white altar where we kneel 

Be still ours to adore; 
The change of heavens, their ruined rush 

Adown the firmament 
Shall be an evening-song to hush 

Our love to life's content. 



52 



Let all the rocks and riven trees 

That drank the Lightnings' rage, 
Take tongue, and testify that these 

Can sear but still assuage: 
The fires of seven heavens are one 

To him who breathes and loves, 
He knows, and would forget the Sun 

For Venus and her doves. 

Let all the whispering air and brooks 

Forget their melody, 
Let dusty sages and their books 

Be dust eternally 
If I forget a word of thine — 

A whispered word of sigh, — 
If I forget thy love is mine. 

Then let me loveless die. 

Afar we watch a crystal star 

That throbs tonight alone, 
It shines, to glimmer o'er the bar 

Where timeless oceans moan; 
The flaming waves it lights shall break 

In utter death, ere thou 
Shalt turn from me, and chill forsake 

This drop upon thy brow. 

WHERE? 

Where would you be tonight, 
Where, if the Slave were free? 
Were the sad eyes young and bright- 
Where would you be? 



53 



Under the stars with him? — 
Silent as they are still? 
Ah, but those eyes are dim, 
And the night grows chill. 

In the autumn woods with her? — 
When the breeze blows soft as her breath? 
Hush, — the answering fir 
Is gray in death. 

Where would he be tonight. 
Were breath on his lips again? 
Does he watch their anguished flight — 
These birds of pain ? 

Her dreams alone for you, 
There where her lot is cast? — 
Her tears this kindly dew — 
Is her woe passed? 

Where will we go tonight? — 
To seek for a bygone day? 
Wearied of life's delight 
Here let us stay. 

IN THE GARDEN 

I wove you a wreath and plucked you a rose — 

A rose and a wreath for your hair, 
And it drooped on your brow in a lorn repose. 

Sighing and lingering there. 
Till it yearningly mingled its soul with yours 

In a fragrant stillness of prayer; 
Now — the whispered peace of that scent endures 

Tho' the rose is dead in despair. 

54 



*'Do you love me now — will you love me then?" — 

**Forevermore," you said — 
"If I wing away, I will flutter again 

To you from the Garden of Death ;" 
Was that far-off sound but the day's chill sign 

Or the ghostly steps of a dread — 
Ah — ever no — love cannot die — 

Tho' I turned and found you — dead. 

Oh the Garden then, and the wilderness now 

Are fair as the garland you wore, 
And the weary moon is pale as your brow 

With the sorrowing love you bore; 
For if ever you saw a swallow skim. 

Or ever a skylark soar, 
You dreamed of an angel's eyes grown dim 

With tears forevermore. 

But the Moon has gone and Night reigns Queen, 

So the roses and weeds are one, 
While I listen in awe to the wings unseen 

That whirr in the realms of the Sun; 
Hush! A swallow seems to cleave the air 

With a freedom scarce begun, 
And I know, my love, your rose blooms there, 

And the long night watch is done. 

TRYST 

I see thy smile in every brook 
That lures with dimpled light, 

I feel thine eyes on every book 
I pore the weary night. 



55 



I hear thy voice in every moan 

Of winter's watery wail ; 
Oh God, my Love, art thou alone 

Beyond Elysium's pale? 

Why dost thou call? — I cannot hear 
What thing thou bidst me do, 

My soul is sharp with shrinking fear — 
I could not, if I knew. 

Am I a ghoul to writhe with thee 

In witches' revelry, 
Hell's outcast to feast with thee 

In loathly devilry? 

I fear thy icy, vampire breath 
That blows across thy face; 

Why dost thou wander far in death 
From God's appointed place? 

I hear thy piteous voice behind 
My words in lonely halls. 

Thy cere-clothes drape my deadened mind 
With dankly rotting palls. 

How oft that dear voice called to me 

At day's declining light. 
To call me 'neath our cypress tree — 

I'll meet thee there to-night! 

DESPAIR 

All day I sit enthroned in ashes; dust 
Defiles the ragged grayness of my hair. 
My steady eyes, with stony, lightless glare 

56 



Gaze ever on thy works with grim distrust; 
Thy will is water, Man, thy love is lust. 

All yearning ends in Me, thy Queen, Despair ; 

Look forth for sympathy, my gaze is there; 
Trust not the blue of steel — it rots to rust: — 

Build ye with stone, and I'll not overthrow, 
But make thy palace mine, and entering in 
Will dwell with thee. Men call me harsh; not 
so, 

I'm kept, thy darling sweetness, ripe with sin; 
Thy prophet said — "Then reap ye as ye sow" — 
Begin in lust, and end as ye begin. 

FORGOTTEN 

If there be nought to do. 

No gentler word to say, 
Then let the kind earth cover me — 

I would not stay. 

The Sun is a smiling fiend, 

And the Moon but his paramour; 

If there be nought to do, 
I hate the day. 

Then let the cold earth cover me, 
The last wheat wisp is gleaned; 

This thing e'en I may do — 
Make green the grass. 

No little word to say? — 

Could not one hour endure? — 

Then let the cold earth cover me, 
I'll hear thee pass. 

57 



Here in my cosy cell 

I lie and dream of her, 
The gold wheat's waving overhead, 

And all is well. 

I drowse and dream the whole day long 

In my narrow,, hermit cell, — 
But list — was that a song? 

Ah, all is well. 

— So narrow I cannot stir, 

And the rippling wheat waves over my bed, 
But I lie and dream of her. 

So all is well. 

Ah yes, she is singing, I hear 

Her footsteps over my hesid — 
Does she kneel and think by my bed — 

Alas, it is not well? 



S^ 



BESIDE THE SEA 

THE CALLING OF THE SEA 

I heard the awful calling of the Sea, 

''Come, come and be at rest with me, 

Come, for I am Time, Eternity, 

Come, for I have neither Isle nor Shore 

Within my soul, come from sullen sod 

And heavy clinging air forevermore — 

Come, for I am what thou namest God." 

I turned and fled before the yearning waves 

Far-reaching ghostly arms to draw me down 

The long, green slopes of death so falsely fair; 

All hell seemed opening in a million graves, 

Whose broken wails rose up with tears to drown 

The wild Sea's undertone ot false despair. 

CHANCE 

There was a Cavern by the nether Sea, 
So, fretted out with tracking barren sand 
And hearing tongues no man may understand, 
I entered there, and flung me wearily 
To utter slumber. 

There hung no dreams within that restful cave, 
I heard no tongue berate the sullen air, 
The chilly echoes whispered everywhere. 
And far away I heard the wavelets lave 
Their solemn granite. 

Afar the entrance gleamed, a sparkling blue, 
A little window on the flashing deep. 



59 



A rift upon the world through clouds of sleep, 
There Ocean's living spirit glimmered through 
In quick pulsations. 

'Twas silver noon, I felt the tides recede; 
A caverned wind rushed past, refreshing, cool, 
But in the Cave there stayed a shallow Pool 
Whereon the dungeoned breezes lately freed 
Wove wondrous patterns. 

As one whose nightly eyes were not unused 
To sphered mysteries, I watched the dancing day 
Divide and wheeling dart in subtle play; 
Within the Pool were met all dreams diffused 
Thro' blue translucence. 

(What opalescent wonders shed their sheen 
On ever-changing sands of moving gold, 
What wind-swept glades may inner eyes behold 
In rippled tide-left pools whose silvered green 
Is shot with sunshine.) 

A momentary Presence hushed the dance. 
The Pool shone smooth as hot obsidian glass; 
From rim to rim I watched a white cloud pass 
And pondered on the triple sport of chance — 
The quiet, cloud, my vision : 

How many clouds or high or low 

Must tramp the vault beyond the Cavern's door 

Ere one may brighten waters on its floor 

Or light this Pool, no mortal mind may know,- 

I saw the marvel. 



60 



The imaged cloud became a memory, 
I sank upon the sand as I would sleep; 
The Cave was dreamless, thus I strove to keep 
Some shadow of the cloud for reverie 
In slumberlands. 

A shadow dimmed the Cavern's farther wall 
A deeper shade upon the granite's gray, 
'Twas not the semblance of the light of day, 
'Twas not the hint of evening's iron pall 
Nor yet of slumber: 

It was the seeming of an Ancient One — 
Made venerable more by thought than years, 
The titan brow was seared, but not by fears 
Of changeless night or any changing Sun — 
It was not temporal. 

Besides the Pool I watched the Ancient brood 
On triple chance of stillness, man, and cloud ; 
He gave no sign, altho' I spoke aloud 
The Name I deemed was His; He understood 
But silence. 

He motioned for the breeze to breathe again, 
His eyes intent upon the Pool now dead 
And awful as his own age-hoaried head ; 
Tho' long, he knows his waiting is not vain 
Who hath all wisdom. 

The tide returning boomed a sudden gust 
That shook the stagnant waters; mimic strife 
Of smitten seas endued the Pool's deep life 
With motion's imagery, as 'twere the dust 
Of nameless nations. 

6i 



Once more I saw the wondrous patterned light, 
The myriad circles weaving mysteries 
Profound as all the deeps of undreamed seas — 
A miracle of symmetry, a pure delight 
Of harmony. 

All wisdom waited for the circles' weft, 
The Ancient bent his brows in labored thought, 
Here moved the riddle's answer he had sought; 
The idle surface was a soul, of mind bereft 
And without meaning. 

Long he pondered there, a ghostly dream. 
Majestic as the mind of Thought his gaze 
On what to me was Chance, for him a maze 
Of meaning, — every circle's transient gleam 
For him was ordered. 

'Twas night without the Cave, the waning moon 
Cast one chill ray upon the Pool; a breeze 
Awoke and startled fled to living seas 
Dismayed at luminiscent-spectered noon, 
Fled unconsoled. 

I woke, (for He had long since vanished), rose 
And strode without the ghastly vacant Cave, 
(Before the Ancient came 'twas not a grave) ; 
I walked upon the Beach where ever flows 
And ebbs infinity. 

By night I watch the widening circles now 

On riffled waters, — myriad interplay 

Of days uncountable, and see the gray 

Of granite dimly through a furrowed Brow — 

A spectral Ancient's. 

62 



Perchance I'll creep within that Master Mind; 
The ceaseless play of chance is ordered Law; 
A breeze upon the waters works the awe 
Unceasingly, could I but rise and find 
Above my thought, a Higher. 

IN THE FIELD BY THE SEA 

There is brine in the crystal air, and the scythe 
gleams bright 
In the sea-girt field, where the ripe corn waiting 
stands, 
Or bends with a rippling smile at the kisses light 
Of the wayward summer breeze; and the glisten- 
ing sands 
Curve far away to the hills' blue mistiness. 

The day is a song in that field by the Sea, till night 
' Makes all hues one; oh the heart is young, when 

hand 
Clasps hand in the seaward field, — the hand of 
might 
And the trusting hand, — for a romp on the moon- 
lit strand. 
Or a walk thro' the field's wild winter wilderness. 

The scythe is lost and eaten with rust 
For the reapers have gone to rest. 

And the heart is broken and crumbled to dust — 
A ribald night-wind's jest. 



63 



HOPE 

Doubt, is your groan my all ; 

Man, am I not with you; 

Was his thirst slaked with gall. 

Life, O Life? 

Is every debt yet due, 

Life, harsh Life? 

Aye, must it ever be 'nay' ; 
Wrong, will there never be right; 
Night, — ^will it ever be day, 
Hope, O Hope? — 
Is no noon born in night, 
Hope, dead Hope? 

Gilt has been all my gold, 

Ashes my grandest feast; 

My deepest seas were shoaled, 

Thought, O Thought; 

From hope have you never ceased, 

Thought, weak Thought? 

Gilt? — and a silver sheen 

Still shimmers the sun-proud sea? 

Ashes? — the grass grows green. 

Thought, O Thought; 

Let the weakest blade be me. 

Thought, kind Thought. 

Nay, it is ever an 'aye' ; 

Not night was made for men. 

Why should I scorn to die, 

Hope, O Hope? 

Unfinished? I'll stature Then, 

Hope, vast Hope? 

64 



Doubt? — for a weakling made; 
Doubt when the flowers paint dust 
That was flesh but last decade, 
Life, O Life? 
In you I'll be one, I trust, 
Life, calm Life. 

THE SOUL 

At first a broken murmur, then a sigh, 

A sob at parting from the sheltering deep, 

And then the weary wave, content to die. 
Ebbs back, to merge itself eternally. 

HAIL 

Hail vast Ocean, wide soul of me, 

My tired-out brain shall at last blow free; 

Down the flowerless blue of your blossoming deep — 

There will I sleep. 

Burn my body and scatter the ash 
Where the white waves shelter and shatter to dash 
Their quivering brine on the spume-seethed sea — 
Green grave for me. 

With 3'ou I am one, in waves would I lie; 
I'd hark to the winds in the Time-stilled sky; 
'Neath numerous stars like my atoms' number 
I'd toss to slumber. 

Hail vast Ocean, life's last for me. 
Billow me, drown me Eternity; 
Under me waters moving, — not dead, — 
Stars overhead. 

6s 



GNOMES'-GOLD 

In the still and mossy places 

Where the wings of the tired-out wind fold 
Down on the flowers' tired faces 

Drowsing their dreams for the Plain, 
Is a Mine of the moon-glimmered Gnomes'-Gold. 

Here in the violet chases 

Where the groundling mice and the elves hold 
Lusty revels and races — 

Safe from the pattering rain, 
Glows the cave for the pollen-light Gnomes'-Grold. 

They said that the Lilies' graces 

Were pilfered from under the leafmould ; 

'Twas false, for a zephyr's embraces — 
(Fond as the Lily was fain), 

Had dusted her anthers with Gnomes'-Gold. 



66 



EARLY SUMMER 

The first mad mouse is here again, 
The clover is his and the fresh green grain, 
He strokes his whiskers in fat content — 
Lord of the fields and the firmament. 

Rich as a Jew he will get him a wife, 
For the life of the mouse is abundant life; 
He will harvest his crop and build him a nest. 
In a palace of moss will he take his rest. 

His acres are broad and his paunch is round. 
The pipe of his children a pleasing sound ; 
He is lord of the summer, and all is peace — 
May his pink young tribe and his crops increase. 



67 



TO A BEE 

There lies your velvet body, stark and cold 
Beside the very flowers you jesting robbed — 
Still powdered gay with all your guilty gold, 
You haunt the silent air that gladly throbbed 
A little hour ago. Did some cruel bird 
This heartless wrong, to dash your happy head 
Against a stone? — But yesterday I heard 
Your busy hum, and now — you lie there dead. 

Who could make war on you? — The roses all 
Forgave the tawdry dross you bandit took, — 
Ah, they would shower a thousand Springs to call 
You back to song again; your daisies look 
With dewy eye upon your huddled form, 
And plead with summer for their gayest friend, — 
Must love then die, ere spring forgets the storm 
Of winter's death, and flit ere sorrows end ? 

Alas, old plunderer! Your tiny day 

Is done; but some remember you — for see! 

The bashful Rose you wooed across the way 

Deflowers her maiden petals lovingly. 

To shroud you with her tender white from eyes 

Of prying ants, and ghoulish beetles, who 

Creep by in death's unhallowed search, and flies, — 

Gray dullards — come to triumph over you. 



68 



Aye, stilled, but not forgotten is your song; 
The loving Sun has willed his kindest ray 
To warm your blossom dream of summers long 
In fields where winter never woos the May, 
That you may kiss each willing bud, and drink 
The sweet from countless cups, or lazy roam 
The starry thyme on some clear river's brink, 
And dream the drowsy days away — at Home! 



69 



TO A WOOD SPRITE 

The winds in the glen will find 5^ou again 

In the budding soul of a rose. 
Where our roguish thrush and our peering wren 

With our mice in the leafy close 
E'en seek you still by lake and rill — 

Ah, seek, but they cannot find. 

My wayward sprite, so aery light 

That bluebells scarcely bent 
'Neath your merry chase at hush of night 

When the moths were all but spent, — 
Have you flitted away from the dusty day? — 

Yes, — the noon is heavier now. 

Did a chilling grief frost up the leaf 
That cupped your morning dcAv, 

Or did you hide from the feathered thief 
Who stole that grape from you? 

Let thief and frost be ever lost 
In an azure prison field. 

Did a bumble bee from over the lea 
Then chase you away from home? — 

That dusty one^ — what, was it he? — 
I'll send the policeman Gnome 

And make him work like any Turk 
To brew you honey dew. 

We will find you again, the bee and I, 

And feed you delectable bread 
While a jealous mouse creeps humbly by 

With sadly diminished head; 
We will find you here in the green glad year 

Under a trilium leaf. 
70 



THE MARRIAGE OF IVIORNING 

There swelled a sound in the Vastness, 
Dispassionate over all weeping, supreme 
O'er the silence of Time and impregnable fastness 
Of uttermost Space ; 'twas a voice of the lone God's 

dream : 
"Harken O Dawns, ye Mothers of Mornings who 

fear me, 
Ye Daughters of Dawns, whose feet are a fleeting 

gleam 
Of light on the shivering waters, revere me — 
Whose merciful might thy Mothers have known, — 
Not I have begotten thy grieving, 
My prayer was never a moan ; 
In the end all Dawns draw near me 
Sighing, 'Thy wings are best:' 
Bold Noon is a semblance deceiving 
Thy light from the aisles of rest; 
For a season insidious Noon shows larger, seems 

better ; 
By his golden raiment my crown is as broken stone, 
So Morn's free Daughters beholding, forget her. 
Forsake her, and follow false Noon alone, 
Drawn after by Love's iron fetter. 

Though my wisdom mourns long, unheeded. 
And the Days troop into green meadows to feast, 
At last shall a calmer refrain I have pleaded 
Above the revels, ring on when all song has ceased : 
I sing of a vaster Meadow whose brook is a River, 
Where days and their fallen hours float slowly, the 

least 
Of my ruined flowers, for I am the giver 
To Dawn of her breeze and her sudden fire: 

71 



How should my Dawn remember 

Those Meads where all hopes respire, 

Or the quickly shuddering quiver 

Of despair washed over anew, — 

Or red hate's sullen ember 

Quenched clean in my River's blue? 

For my face is the shadow of flame, a wonder be- 
clouded 

By manifold marvels of Morning's unuttered de- 
sire ; 

My name is a music of mystery crowded 

With meanings outnumbering the chords of lyre, — 

But the Player's hand is enshrouded. 

Mine is the wind in the rushes. 

Mine is the murmur that rustles the reed. 

Trembling a music the wild Night hushes 

Where she presses her head on the thyme and the 
poppy seed; 

Mine all the laughter far-echoing black-vaulted 
thunder 

As I flash through the high storm-halls, my light- 
nings freed. 

Cleaving blue ether, and rending asunder 

Azure domes of god's delight: 

Far on unwearied pinions 

With Dawn I glide all night, 

And the stars glow down their wonder 

On our undulous even sweep; 

There, in all suns' dominions, 

A dream of the dusk I sleep 

Till the demons who dwell in the fountains of fire 
shall awaken — 



n 



Drenching the deeps with all crimson hues of their 

rite — 
Kindling the fields by stars forsaken; — 
But the fiutterless wings cleave on, pure white, 
Glide steadily on unshaken. 

Not I have delight in thy sorrow, 
Free Daughters of Dawn, — ^ye maidens sublime 
On Eternity's mountains o'erlooking the morrow; 
My kingdom is over all days, yet a vassal to Time; 
Though ye rest in my meadows at last, to his might 

I surrender 
What wonderful ways ye wander, the hills ye shall 

climb, — 
To his wisdom what groping shall lacerate tender 
Seekers for light that endures within: 
Hear ye, and believe the story 
O Days, of one of thy kin — 
The Morning, a maiden, and slender, 
Fair above sisters fair, — 
Hers all their promise, their glory 
Is shed as rain on her hair: 
She is Time's youngest, the darling, — all light her 

adorning, — 
Found from afar as on fateful wings I win 
Way to her slumber with life's first warning — 
Till, as leaves unfold, as dreams begin. 
Blossoms the Marriage of Morning. 

Down from those wings like a feather 
Softly as hope I fall on the Morn; 
She stirs in the dews where we waken together 
Wide on a wondering world in its light new-born, 
And the lustrous fire in her eyes is desire unspoken, 
Love for a dawning day, for the dead night, scorn; 

73 



She dreamed not wings or their sweep unbroken 

Infinite over her marvellous head; 

But the wings glide on forever 

Though Dawn flares full and red, 

And the Morn's lips plead as a token 

She longed all night for love: 

Voice of the winds, shall I sever 

Her life for those wings above? 

Kindly calm are the sea-deep eyes of the dreamer, 

Pure and wide as the eyes of a maid unwed; 

O night! is she only a seemer? — 

Whiter than wings with their light unshed, 

Whatever the dusk may deem her. 

Real! and the Dawn's, O Maiden; 

Thine is the whisper that wakens the trees. 

Shaking their branches with heavy dreams laden, 

Where danker than night and bedewed with an 
evil disease 

Hang batlike, foul bodies asweat in an ichorous 
glowing : 

Thine is the smile o'erstealing the flower-flecked 
leas 

Where iris takes flaunting life, her flags gaily flow- 
ing 

As her braggart bees do battle, and chase 

Small beetles who creep in to plunder 

Her honey-cells' holiest place: 

Spirit of all things growing! 

On the undulous nodding grass 

Thine is the lissome wonder 

As it waves to bid thee pass: 

Child of the Dawn, her ever ineffable daughter. 

Who has not gazed with awe on thy lovely face, 

74 



Morning! whose smile is as wind on the water? — 
Of the noblest flowers her gentle race, 
And her lore the love they taught her. 

Unseen o'er an infinite Ocean, 

Undreamed as death in the Morn's deep eyes, 

The wings wheel on in their time-free motion, 

Steadily glide forever, though fire arise 

Till the whole heaven glows like the heart of a 

wide swung censer. 
Though life and its wells flame up as the fierce 

night dies: 
What should she fear when desires intenser 
Kindle her crystalline eyes at mine, 
What wings should the Dawn's free daughter 
Bow under and know divine? 
Though the crimson mists roll denser 
Than ever the dead might knew. 
Shall Morning dream who brought her 
Love from the cloudless blue? 
Though day flare out and impalpable shadows 

thicken 
As ghostly bats till their blood drips down like wine 
Shrivelling the grass, let his name be stricken 
From time, who slays his hope on thine, 
O Morn, as thy pulses quicken. 

Hush, for the rushes answer, 

'Love is the summer whose full heat slays ;' 

Swift as the feet of a fairy dancer. 

Fresher in love and its promise the young grass 

sways, — 
'Who shall father the unborn hours of the Morn- 

ing?' 
And the proud red lily flaunts her a daring praise — 

75 



'See where she crimsons at love's first warning!' 

Then, from the loneliest breeze on the seaward lea — 

'Let me lift thy veil and follow 

Afar so all winds may see 

The lip of the Dew's adorning 

Where thy breath plays warm and low; 

What spirits haunt that hollow 

Is a spell all winds would know:' 

And farther than all, as the moan of a troubled 

sleeper, 
The undawned Sea takes solemn voice, 'Let me 
Sink under her love forever, and deeper 
Than any of these, O Night ; let me be 
As her god, her tears' kind keeper.' 

Have those darker souls conspired 

That her tears and her love be a bitter thing? 

Shall the Daughter of Dawn, our long-desired 

Hear only a distant plea in its listless ring, 

Insistent as death's still knell, an echo eternal 

Wherever is time, of Tides, and Death on the wing 

Over smooth waters and meadows made vernal 

In laughter and flowers of the living light? 

As a wind-dogged mist is driven 

Ashore in its clinging white. 

There speeds from the sea, supernal 

The Morning's mystical Mate; 

And the keen clear air is riven 

In tears at fear of her fate; 

For the wildness of water and the freedom of fire 

are united, — 
Light wedded to Shadow in twilight's unholier 

state ; 
Tall flowers and untrampled grasses affrighted 

76 



Cower down and shrivel in withering hate, 
Wilt under the hatred plighted. 

Who is her sullen master, 

Arising unclean from the shuddering sea? 

Why should the shaken waves quake as the blaster 

And slayer of stars in the dawn, forsakes them to 
flee 

A blight on the sun-loved land, and light's blas- 
phemer 

Whose breath is a deathly mist on valley and lea? 

Who shall arise from the water supremer 

Than tides heaped blue in their mountainous might. 

From Ocean's green meadows who plunders 

Their aureat lilies of light? 

Dawn was a golden dreamer 

When she visioned thy joy, O Morn — 

When she sowed all billows with wonders 

Of an ever ungarnered corn; 

For thy terrible Lord shall harvest the billows, a 
mowing, 

A slaughter of stars on the waters his rising, his 
blight 

Is the blasting of motion, cessation of flowing 

Where all things flow, till the blossoms die white 

In the wildered wake of his going. 

He comes, and his mists creep chiller 

Than winter's to shrivel the lilied land ; 

As he steals from the sea, keen shrieks pierce shriller 

Than death's through the stricken air from a bird's 

crushed band, 
Where circling they wheel and fall, dead stones to 

the ocean ; 
First a finger, swiftly a ghostlier hand 

77 



Puts forth on the grass a groper's light motion, — 

Morning, thy Lord is blind! 

Bend, he would touch thy tresses. 

Thy face would his fingers find ; 

Bow down in thy humble devotion 

Free spirit of Dawn grown meek 

At the wonder of first caresses, 

And a might all maidens seek; 

Thine own calm eyes shall be day to thy Lord, and 

vision ; 
His feet shall follow thy feet a way designed. 
For his was the choosing but thine the decision ; 
Let life make a mock of what love repined, 
Live, though thy hope be derision. 

Was Night thy ruthless betrayer, 

O Morning whose wondering eyes grow dim 

With unheeded desire at love's first prayer? 

Dank is all dead love's passion for a curse on him 

Whose destined chattle thou art in lust's high treas- 
on; 

Take faith from the withering grass w^here shadows 
outlimn 

A passing of wings, thy hope in a season 

When misery's rain and its memory fails: — 

There is One who has never forsaken 

Thy need when no hope avails, 

Who shall comfort when impotent reason 

Beats bruised at impassable bars; 

He will show thee dominions untaken 

By woe, beyond the stars. 

He will lead thee a queen through their valleys 
and mountainous places. 

From afar he will show thee a Sea with its mysti- 
cal sails, 

78 



He will teach thee the fulness of love, what its grace 

is, 
From there shalt thou see, as the low light pales 
Children's unborn faces. 

Morning! thy marriage the saddest. 

The lornest that lingering love e'er knew; 

Morning! thy children the merriest, maddest — 

Thine Hours, assuring that joy, not sorrow is true ; 

Those fleet-foot Hours on the sapphire mountains, 
dividing 

Time from the lapse of time, skimming the bound- 
less blue 

Over the heavens' vast ranges, and gliding 

Swifter than light's own wings down skies 

Asheen to their twinkling dances: 

(Hours! in whose eager eyes 

The wonder of thought abiding 

Is delight to thy mother's gaze. 

As the swift bright flash of thy glances 

Makes fire in the ethen's haze:) 

In happier sons is thy Lord's dull wrath confound- 
ed, 

Morning, the hope of a world is their young sur- 
prise 

Awakened to life on an azure unbounded — 

Uncircumscribed, theirs, — till the day-sun dies, — 

Thine, by fair sons surrounded. 

Daughter of Morning, whisper 
Thy mother's name to the timid ferns, 
Sing of her praise till they waken and lisp her 
Fame round the forest aisles in the love she yearns: 
Born of the Dawn's free child, humbler and lighter 
Than hers is thy fairy touch where the glad earth 
learns 

79 



From the rippling grass thj^ parentage brighter 

And higher than hot day's drowsy wind: 

Hour of the Breeze! another's 

Desire shall kindle what mind 

Would make thee a sudden smiter 

Of lilies abased in love; 

For desire of all Earth was thy mother's, 

Though her sons should conquer above; 

Fleeter of foot are thy brothers, but thou art the 

fairest. 
Theirs Is all vision for thou art gentle and blind ; 
Lonely Daughter of Morn, who sharest 
Earth with thy Mother, and all things kind — 
Hers is the garland thou wearest. 

Sons of the Morning! who left her 

Lonely on barren meadows, forlorn 

As a lily In winter, ye have bereft her 

Of comfort when love and Its fruit turn bitter in 
scorn ; 

Ye glorious spendthrifts who recklessly ruin and 
squander 

Light on dull wastrels that ever were alien to 
Morn, 

Foreign, afar in vain ethers ye wander, 

Clouds and their vanishing halls are brighter for ye ; 

Famous sons of thy mother, 

Who should be prouder than she? — 

In her bitterest need must she ponder 

Alone, and dumb as a stone, 

For the wrong ye do, no other 

Shall suflFer, and ye shall atone: 

Day shall not reign forever, the Night grows fret- 
ful, 

Down the ways of departing shall Morn go free, 

80 



Young once more, of sorrow forgetful, 
But ye shall abide on the troubled sea 
Dusky dreams, and regretful. 

Grayer than grief is thine ageing. 

Fickle, the grasses forget thy name, 

Ripening under a warmer presaging 

Of Summer and Noon, O Morn, than thy passion- 
less flame; 

For the Morning's desires were purer than sum- 
mer's, and sweeter 

Than Noon's in their ruddy distrust of aught but 
shame : 

Might I know whose desire would defeat her 

As I sped all night on those ageless wings. 

Might I hint of the Noon's false glamour 

Where I slept on the soul of things? 

For her Daughter arising, shall meet her 

There on the withering grass. 

Her soft breath swelled to a clamour 

That hot love come to pass: 

Hour of the Breeze! thy chosen is Noon, who will 
slay thee; 

Blind as thine eyes thy young love follows and 
clings 

To him whose passionate fire will betray thee: 

This, wan Morning, thine old age brings, 

Love, not death, shall dismay thee. 

Aged, thy wonderment changes, 
Morning, whose children were all a delight, 
A respite from weeping, — and Noon estranges 
The last, the loveliest, pitiful, blind as the night: 
So let all love's dream end in thy daughter's undo- 
ing, 

8i 



Unhappy henceforth, let her linger on perishing 

sight, 
For her fate is a woe that surpasses all rueing, — 
Gaze up, and receive thy blessing, the last 
Ere the Shadow overtake thee — 
Blindness, as God moves past. 
No despoiling of light, an enduing 
Of vision shall bless thee blind. 
No coming of night may shake thee 
Agaze on thine innermost mind; 
Now shine fair wishes as memories. Morning mis* 

mated ; 
Sweep out of all Time, ye wings, wheel down from 

the Vast, 
On thy shadow lies Dawn, her flame unabated. 
And asleep on Infinity's billowing blast 
Is a Dream that our waking belated. 

Home with the Dawn, thy Mother! 

Home on the hush of those dusky wings: 

Thy brief bright reign is over, another 

Shall waken and welcome the unborn mother of 

kings; 
On the wide waste way of thy going another shall 

brighten, 

Morning! for listen, afar where thy lost Breeze 

sings 
Lullabies there where her babe's eyes lighten — 
Youngest of mornings who gladden the East: 
Home! for I have been near thee, 

1 have been hope's high priest, — 
Why should my whisper frighten 
The soul in thy darkened eyes? 
Only the youngest fear me. 

But thou, — thy last hope dies: 

82 



Up! on those wings with me, dream thou of my 

River ! 
Day was of little things, thy sorrow the least: 
Soundly sleep, for I am the giver 
Of peace, — know that all grief has ceased, — 
For never those vast wings quiver. 

I am the hidden concealer, 

My comfort was over thee all day long : 

At night I appear, the sudden revealer 

Of light and its mysteries veiling a starrier throng 

Than the Day's pale wanderers: drowse on those 

rushing 
Wings, and dream of my River's eternal song — 
'Dip but a bruised foot, a rosier flushing 
Reneweth the Morning than Dawn e'er knew:' 
Gently my presence falling 
Steals as a healing dew 
On anger; all discords hushing 
I breathed on thy terrible Lord; 
And thy Sons gave ear to my calling, 
Trembling with one accord — 
'Death?' and I answered, 'Yea.' To thy Daugh- 
ter weeping, — 
*I am the righter of wrong the blindest do, 
Have sight for the tears in my keeping.' " 
Silence, and only the midnight blue 
Awing on eternal sleeping. 



83 



BOOKS 

i gioat over cyphered rolls 

And delve in the souls of the dead, 
Till the students' curfew tolls 

A knell for the mysteries read; 

Each ghastly mind parades 

Its naked life in death, 
A shadow mid shadowless shades 

Piping a feeble breath — 

Shrilling a voice that late 
Smote hot in truth or lie, 

To gibber a truer hate 
That only men can die. 

The jester walks with the sage — 
Twin fools in the Land of Night, 

Here still the prophets rage 
Their curse of eternal light. 

Poets are here with the rest, 

Divines and felons lust 
As they did in the light — but jest! 

Their brains are whispered by dust ; 

Their brains that started the tears 

To blot a life or a page, 
Are the sport, or remorseless jeers 

Of winds that never age. 

The pettiest sin shows great 
Tho' the brain-dust rots away. 

For the love it bears, or hate. 
Is eternity's child to-day. 

84 



To-day — this night I read 

By their passionless ashes hot, 

Like these I nourish a seed 

That shall bloom and wither forgot. 



h 



READING 

Reading the Rune of the Stars, Riddle of Ages, 
Weaving a tangled web from the Skein of Fate, 
Hailing the Sphynx, but not with words cf the 

Sages ; 
Sailing an unknown Sea, and passing the Gate 
Of the Shadowy Vale, treading an untrod way 
Thro' Time's inscrutable Hills; reading in stone 
The birth of forgotten worlds on crags grown gray 
With the lichens of aeons, but each one reading 

alone : 

Poring the Book of Life, but deep in the Scroll 
Of Death; feeling the blood of the Universe beat, 
And watching the Systems whirl by with a lurch- 
ing roll 
As they speak one another in passing to reel on 

till they meet 
On the Infinite Silence of Time; hearing the Song 
Of the worlds; and some wail up with the low- 
sung moan 
Of the Lost: hearing the homeward Hymns of the 

Throng 
As they haste to the Tryst; but some are alone, 
alone : 

Living one life as a mote in the Infinite whole, 
Dying one death, or the Whole were plunged in 

Night, 
Having no soul but a gleam of the Infinite Soul; 
Now an eddying tremor, bathed in light, 
Now a shudder in ether, calling the rest 
To life; and later the ice on that Iron Hand 

86 



As It chills the brain of a man, to end his quest 
For the Unseen Things outlimned on the Border- 
land. 

When will the Great Book close; — what will the 

last 
Word be? We have read, all Men, but a line or 

two. 
And must ever read on, until we have passed 
Thro' countless deaths to myriad lives anew — 
Thro' every atom it charts, and every wave 
Of the Infinite Sea it sings; thro' every deed 
Of glory or shame, — must wallow in every grave 
Undelved it foretells; for this is the Book we 

read ; — 

Kosmos Eternal, self-existent, not hewn 
From the brain of Man as God: Kosmos that sinks 
The stars in the awful abyss as hoar-frost strewn 
On the shores of the night-brooded sea ; Kosmos that 

thinks. 
And in thinking creates the Thing; Kosmos the 

One, 
Tho' many; Kosmos the spark of the glow-worm's 

light, 
Kosmos the hell of the uttermost raging Sun; 
Kosmos the Father of Wrong and Wielder of Right. 



87 



MEMORY REMEMBERED 

I have stolen away from home — 

Stolen to read on yonder knoll, 

Read a book — or is it scroll 
Legended with deeds of daring 

In the days of long ago, — 
Mariners on strange seas faring, 
Now, they drift in listless foam; 

Yes, I knew you — long ago. 

Noon has lulled the apple trees 

Till the droning bees are still 

There upon the blossomed hill, — 
I am tired of listless thinking, 

I will sleep and dream awhile, 
Deep in purple clover sinking, 
I will sail the breezy seas — 

I will live with you a while. 

I have sailed these brine-cut seas. 
Know them in their wild unrest. 
Found their isles beyond the West, — 

Lived and died with you, my sea-mates. 
Sailed with you — but long ago. 

Sung your love-songs, died your death-fates 

In the stinging hail or breeze — 
Perished with you long ago. 

How we found that Western Land, 
How we bound their men for slaves. 
How we lay in brine-fresh graves — 

Thro' the apple-trees is singing. 
Was it then, or is it now? 

Hark! the battle shout goes ringing 

And I grasp a brother's hand — 
Farewell then, and farewell now. 
88 



As I ponder o'er my book 
Low I hear the lazy bees 
Droning thro' the apple-trees; 

Far away the kine are lowing 
And a hush falls over all ; 

Swift the heavens in sunset glowing 

Fade in one remembered look — 
Oh my Soul — when was it all? 



89 



FLAME KINGS* 

To J. L. B., June 26, 1 9 14 

Afar she stood and saw the Flame Kings pass, 
Between her feet and theirs a chasm yawned 
Down whose unutterable void no star has dawned ; 
She would have followed one whose wistful face 
Was almost turned to her, but knew his glance 
Forbade, yet hoped; so, leaning from that Place, 
Beneath, she saw a Sea of glowing glass. 
And deemed the marvel not of barren Chance, 
But some design of him, her flaming friend ; 
Lo, mirrored aeons adown a bleak abyss 
She saw the pageant pass, those Kings ascend 
Unnumbered ages; dimly dreaming, guessed 
One meaning mind has ne'er expressed 
In finite thought, or ever can; for this. 
Not mine, is hers; envisioned with her mind 
I write, who am no prophet; seek, and find. 

Beating the ether on vibrant fire. 
Steadily soaring, as dreams aspire 
On spirit pinions with vision asheen 
To pass the Dawn's unsurmountable hills 

And gaze o'er a Valley unseen — 
Float the Flame Kings, one by one, 
Blazing their aureate way to a Sun 
That is ultimate over all Kings — 

Greater than all, save Sleep, 



*This is an attempt to describe a dream which J. L. 
B. actually had. Some of the lines are from the dream 
itself; but, as usual in such cases, only a general mem- 
ory of the whole survives the awakening. The title 
is a part of the dream. J. T. 

90 



Supreme over stars and souls, 

First among ordered things, 

Lord of the shoreless Deep 

Whose sand shines through its shoals 

As a shifting glitter of stars 

For a veil to all vision's reach; 

Mover of ageless tides 

Over those world-strewn bars 

Where shattered, the systems bleach 

Heaping Infinity's grave — 

Where the god of all dreams abides, 

There denser midnight stills 

All rays than throbs to their beams. 

So a clamour of silence fills 

Black space with the ghosts of dreams; 

Up to this Sun they wave. 

Flame Kings, one by one. 

And the sway of their wending fills 
The crystalline void with a choral sound. 
So a rushing of utterance rings around 
The listening stars in their last profound, — 

Sweeping an infinite lyre 
With the chords of a universe, thundering songs 
Of love begotten on blackened hate. 
Of life on nothingness, rousing throngs 
Of slumberous clouds to know desire — 
To look with might on unfathered space, 
To woo the night and beget a race 
Who shall conquer Chaos and bring forth Fate, 

Eternity's semblance, cast 

As a shadow of One loomed vast 

On awful abysses unsunned 

Down chasms no Flame may cleave. 

Or its fanning reverberate 

To the likeness of wonder stunned 
91 



As a Dawn arisen in hell 

Where somberly, oceans heave 

Their sooty billows aswell 
Under the blackness of light unborn 
That never shall startle a dreaming Morn; — 

Fate, in that Sun's keen rays 

Foreshadowing One on all days 

Round the uttermost ether's rim 

Where the shades of dreams go not, 

And Flame Kings fade, forgot 
In the splendour of Him. 
She saw the Flame Kings down a living vision. 
Followed one, and touched his garment's hem, 
Flashed with him above the shoreless Deep 
Whereon his burning brothers moved serene 
Beyond all firmaments afire with them: 
Starkly straight as Morning's primal ray 
That cleaves the Eastern hills from clinging night, 
A solitary beam shot past her sight, — 
A shaft of adamantine light, but black, 
And sharp as two-edged death, whose upper blade 
Shears life from man, the nether, severing 
His mind from time; there, glancing swiftly back. 
She saw the beam congealed to harder shade. 
Beheld a whirling sword whose sharp decision 
Warred upon the Flame of every King — 
Cleft their elemental fires in twain; 
The duller dross was shed a jewelled rain 
Adown the empty ether, vanishing 
In brittle tinkling dews where one uncrowned 
His head majestical as light, unwound 
The involuted fire that bound his zone, 
And flung his changing robe of splendid flame — 
A shower of broken red and flawless green. 
Of emeralds and rubies, down the night; 

92 



So all, save one, who kept the dross his own, 
Unawed by any Sun's eternal Name, 
Acknowledging above his reign no might 
Save time alone; so all, save one proud hue, — 
From amethyst, and sapphires' midnight blue, 
Through sultry topazes whose sullen stain 
Was molten gold, to that pure queen of gems 
Unspoiled by any opalescent sheen, — 
Commingled, blazing swiftly down 
When vassal Flame-Kings hurled their diadems 
Upon the Deep: one King gave not his crown, 
His Flame impure toiled on, the sword 
An instant paused, then passed ; he owned no Lord. 

Unloosened all their dingy dross, 

(Save only one, unblest by loss), 

Ethereally lightened, leaps their pace, 

Where upward rushing stream the Kings 

Of Flame athwart the dusky face 

Subdued by jewels, of under-space, — 

The deeply glowing ether, core 

Aflame, though crimsonly concealed 

Beneath inert unmelting hail 

Of rubies, mountain-massed, the shed 

Unflowing robes of soaring Kings 

Who go to find a face revealed 

Behind a whiter fire. No red 

Yet tinct with mortal blood 

May dull that flaming countenance, 

Nor green of emeralds avail 

To temper splendour with amaze 

For eyes immortal strangely wed 

To perfect light; the sapphire glows 

With no deep night's refracted ray 



93 



Before the fires of final Day 

Intolerably pure and keen — 

Translucent as the heart of Light, 

Ashamed, she shines a flawless white; 

Transpierced by finer fire, the green 

Of emeralds, dissolving, clears 

To sheerest crystal colourless; 

Thus chastened, when the Day appears 

Serene above Death's wilderness 

A misty veil before the face 

Of that lone Sun outlasting time 

Alone, no jewel's ray may change 

Unshatterable excellence 

To aught less unified, less pure; 

As queenly rubies fell, so all; 

No lesser radiances endure, 

Weak princelings get them thence; 

The smoke-beclouded topaz shows 

No golden soil or amber stain 

Invisible in light sublime 

Outblazing colours; offering vain 

Their evening stillness, slowly pale 

The gentle amethysts to rain 

Of dewy scintillance, ashine 

Their starry tenderness as His, 

The Sun above all stars divine — 

The lonely Star who ever Is. 

She followed now across the starless places. 
Saw the wonder of their glances brighten 
Over silent voids and windy spaces 
Hollowed to the breath of time's elation, 
Life; beheld their pinions slowly lighten, 
Followed up the Dawn, and heard them pouring 
Forth their souls in one oblation, 

94 



Saw the Day-tide ever nearer rushing 
Kindle all their eyes to light's adoring, — 
Heard a praise magnificent, and saw them 
One by one bow down and shield their faces ; 
Then the full Day broke, a sudden flushing 
Drenched their bended Flames with time's last 

wonder — 
Fire made absolute might overawe them 
Only less divine, the Flame Kings; nearer, 
Sterner moved the Day and smote asunder 
Self from Flame; the Kings arose, they hastened 
Ever swifter on, nor glanced behind them 
Where she panting followed ; would they hear her ? 
Must that Sun's intolerance not blind them? 
Soared the Kings unshaded, — they were chastened ; 
Face averted, still she laboured slowly 
Up the ultimate she might not gaze upon, 
Unfearful she, one glance had blessed her holy 
Before that universal shrine, as ever on 
With praise in tongues unknown the free Flames 

fared. 
Untranslatable to mortal words their song 
She strove in vain to murmur; eagerly 
She pressed to touch her friend's immortal plume 
Or dazzling feet, — would he but stay! 

Had she but dared, 
Who knows, she had not died, but breathed to sing 
Unutterable things past death's remembering; 
Alas! she feared to soil his light with earthly clay. 

Had she but dared! 
Go, bolder soul, attune 
Thine inner ear to Sleep, 
Not thou shalt weep; 
It was no tomb 

95 



Her humble spirit shunned, 
Unread the fatal rune 
Inhewn on living rock: 

It was no doom 
Of truth, and so, to be, 
That song should fall forgot 

Down emptiness. 

She hailed him not. 
Her faith's great weariness 
O'ercame her eager lips — 
Withheld the finger tips 

Put forth to plead; 
Perchance he would not heed? 
Alas! that hope despaired 
To touch those wings unsunned 

By mortal stars; 
What though he made a mock 
Of praying dreams, a jest 
On fair humility, — 
A scorn for those who seek, 

And finding rest. 
Repine, — 
Then had she shone 
(Though ever meek) 
With Flame twice great as he. 
His seeming radiance known 
But embers of the fire divine 
Unbreathed upon by God, 
His jewel a dingy stone, 
His wings but common sod 
And worthiness a dream. 
But he was none of this, 
His Flame was purified; 
So had his spirit kiss 
Touched fire upon her brow, 

96 



Beatified 

Her lowliness 
And lit her lips with prophecy ; 

His mind's caress 
Had burned her pure as he 
Is clean above all earthiness, 

Had she but dared. 

Night and her reticent eyes are won! 

Chaos no more is her temple's fane; 

Her dusky hair is a molten gold 

Where she walks on eternal hills 

Abloom with flowers of the uttermost Sun 

Whose Dawn, as a coral rain 

Sways over valleys, fold on fold, — 

Wind upon wind, awakening, fills 

The azure with fire, the ether with song. 

For chaos is conquered, his iron undone. 

The Doors of that hidden tomb unsealed 

Where Day has slumbered for aeons and aeons, 

So his dreamful eyes behold the Sun 

Remembered, but unrevealed 
Through exiled ages in Death's grim Land: 

Whose are the victory's paeans 
Swelling the Morning's freshening gale 

Where it sweeps along 
Ethereal meads as a veering ship 
Cleaving with light the crystalline main, — 
Furrowing nothingness into spray 
Of clustering stars and worlds flung free 
Asparkle in risen Day: 

Hail ye Flame-Kings, hail! 

Thine is the song 
Trembling Eternity's lip 
97 



With Fate's Ineffable, still refrain ; 
Thine is the Dawn on that Sea 
Where life swept dreams away 
And the shadow of One was cast 
As an image of all to be: 
Kings of the Living Mind, 

Thine be all praise; 
Eternal, though changed, ye soar 
Over years and the tomb of Time, 
Refined in Truth's white Fire, 
Free of the tears we keep, — 
Free of all years, ye mount 
Up to thy Sun sublime 
And the Perished Dawns respire 
In the wind of thy wonderful ways; 
Up to that Sun ye stream, — 
Tongues of Eternity's dream 
Heard in our transient sleep 
Here on the echoing shore 
Of waters remembering Dawn. 

Such praise she sang down Morn's ambrosial air, 

Her friend, with long remembrance down his eyes 

Turned back an instant, sanctified her there, 

A priestess of the lonely Sun supreme 

Above all galaxies and mortal skies: 

Where others gaze on night beholding nought 

Save random stars or distant mistiness 

Of hoary suns, her mind had dared to dream 

A vaster universe unseen, yet real. 

Within, beyond the vacant wilderness 

Of naked space; till ever rolling thought 

Evolving slowly shadowlike from thence, 

Assumed corporeal form, and fire was born ; 

As fire alone may purest fire refine, 

98 



From fire there came forth flame, from flame 

In ordered sequence, Kings arose divine 

Above all lesser fires: her reverence 

For their sublimer majesties o'ercame 

All fear, so she went singing down the Morn, 

Their prophetess. 

In final Day she stands; 
The Flame Kings' pilgrimage is all but done ; 
She may no nearer go, but stays afar 
Reluctantly her feet that seek the Sun 
As they, her rulers: there, with idle hands 
Enclasped, though not in hope, must she abide 
While ever on they fare to greet their Star, 
Their undiminished fount through flaming years 
By heedless praise unchilled, or vainer prayer: 
How glady had she gone, a Flame-King's bride! 

There is a Sea undreamed that each must cross 

On feet not made of earth, whose brackish tears 

Bewail the bitterness of every loss 

The clinging clay shall mourn, if he would fare 

Beyond the Dawn to Day's untravelled Land 

And know the Sun whose light is everywhere, 

Unseen, all-seeing; here, upon the shore 

Of that remembering water, awed, we wait; 

The venture beckons us with airy hand. 

Though Dawn delay and longed-for Night be late, 

Yet some shall cross at last and mourn no more. 

A priestess of the Flame Kings, earthly yet, 
She has not trod that Sea her eyes forget 
With mortal light; 'tis thus she stands alone, — 
While on they flame, — without the holier zone 



99 



Of fire celestial: let her dream, and sing 
Through me her distant vision's lesser thing. 

What Flame's empurpled arrogance has dared 
To flicker on full clad, all unashamed, 
His hidden heart's divinity unbared? 
His jewelled crov^^n shows dull as dusty glass. 
The robe that once was fire is sooty smoke; 
Alone he reigns, whose boastful tongue disclaimed 
All truth, void night his realm; he shall not rule 
An equal kingdom with his brothers: 

"Fall 
Forever dov^m to Truth, thy hell, vain fool; 
Be quenched in fires thy lying life awoke 
To ever fiercer flame: so perish all 
Who desecrate with lust of gain the spark 
Divine I gave with life: Die thou; Be Dark." 

Calm as Dawn the awful doom 
Flashes stark upon the King, 
Sears the brow with one immortal Name 
Rash pride would never own; 
No word spoken; felt alone 
That silent severance of Flame 
From Light omnipotent: 
Suddenly a blinding gloom 
Strikes the Eyes of Day to stone, 
Stays that radiant soaring band. 
Chills the flaming praise they sing: 
Instantly all motion dies, 
The Sun has hurled his final Dart — 
"Blaspheming Light, be thou apart"; 
Swift as fire athwart dead space, 
Tipt with death its keen beam flies. 
Pierces through each Flame King's heart, 
'lOO 



Changes not one living face; 

Still as yesterdays they stand 

Frozen into iron might 

Dazzling tongues all crystal bright 

As fallen dews on asphodel, 

Save one, that glisters hard and black — 

An adamantine jewel of hell. 

Then down dead night a meteor track 
Of arrow blackness lives and lies, — 
Extinct the black, its brilliance dead: 
The life of that false King is rendered back 
To death who breathed and hell who bred 
Its infamy. 

This death his first: 
The very ash of him shall die, 
His charred-out Flame shall sink accursed, 
. Be blasted down to utter nothingness. 
Within that Sun's relentless core: 
No later Flame shall leap to bless 
His memory: his name shall live no more. 

For lo! sheer up the stricken Day he speeds, 
A streak of motion where all else is still ; 
All movement save his own holds back Its breath ; 
Swifter, swifter, swifter up his flight — 
No dream of death e'er sped so swift as he 
Where stark toward the Star of Stars he streams; 
Black as death he ever blacker burns, 
Chars to crisper cinders Daytide's wrack ; 
Starting silently, he stirs the seeming Night 
Whose ebon crystal stands outbrazening brass, 
By quick degrees to whisper as If reeds 
Were rustled In a rising breeze; shrill 
As whistling arrows tipt with sharpened glass, 

lOI 



That strive up wintry winds a lessening death, 
The whisper swells to shrieks of misery 
So keen his ever swifter flight, till screams 
Of piercing terror startle space to learn 
This once that Sun of Suns' Immortal Name 
He yells in death : the Star of Stars goes black, 
Extinct its light an instant, night is drenched 
With pent-up floods of death ; in seething flame 
That False King's blackened travesty is quenched. 

Sheer down the Sun^s immortal Fire he pierced. 
Annihilated there he found his hell. 

The horror of it strikes her blind ; 

She prays within: 

"Immortal Mind, 

Only thou art pitiless; 

Grant my blindness tears to bless 
His memory and blot his end ; 
Who knows, he might have been my friend." 

"This joy be thine; 
Let Mercy's tender dews 

Unseal thine eyes. 
Beholding, after mortal kind 

Some good in him." 

Her plea is answered : human tears 
Refreshing what was once divine 

Rain down the parched years; 
Their crystal scatters heavenly hues — 
His memory's radiance long fo redone — 

O'er many a wearied mind: 
Immortally the final Sun 



1 02 



Is Lord of all our fleeting skies, 

Though pity's drops bedim 
Light only less sublime than His, 

Should men bewail 
His changeless Face unseen 
Behind our ever-varying veil 

Of sorrow^'s rain and Him? 
The rain shall cease; He ever is. 

Once more shines forth eternal Day, 
With darkness passed that King away 
A dream from unremembering life: 
Upward throng the Flame Kings, freed 
Their host of all discordant strife; 
While yet his blasphemy had tongue, 
Their praises were a lyre unstrung. 
Their harmony a rifted reed, 
And melodies unrythmed jars 
Of tuneless dissonance ; but now. 
As free on rushing fire they climb, 
Their perfect music stays the stars 
In distant ravishment, foretells 
Harmonious years of bright increase 
To ever purer light, and swells 
A pealing anthem up to Time, 
Who pausing, smooths his rugged brow 
And smiles in peace. 

What mysteries she learned, their Prophetess! 
Though one return from dream, his labouring mind 
May never overtake the weariness 
Who leads him dayward back, or following, find 
Those magic portals his own soul designed 
A gateway into paradise; so she, 
Reluctantly returning thence, may sing 

103 



No rounded song of wide-eyed prophecies, 
Nor may a mortal's hands unbidden bring 
Celestial fire to men. 

I dimly see 
Through her enkindled eyes, infinities 
Of all-containing wisdom, half-concealed 
Through misty revelation, half-divine 
With reason's perfect clarities ashine; 
Gaze, — her vision distantly revealed: 

As dreams who have breathed the spirit of fire 
Outspeed all light on their wonder's quest, 
So the Kings flash on in their Sun's behest 
Filled with the Day their Flames inspire: 
As with life-giving wine a god might drink 
Till his echoing laughter arouses the storms, 
Their spirits are kindled at fire supreme 
Over death's forever unnumbered forms: 
Unvisioned the Flame Kings' ultimate state. 
Their Prophetess gazes beyond all years — 
Divining the Dawn from a hint of Morn, 
Where, ages above all Night, ap/pears 
Ineffably calm as the face of Fate, 
A gleaming mist of light unborn ; 
Smiting the Deep with reverberant flame 
Down all ages invisibly stream 
Their changing majesties, draping our skies 
With auroral splendors moving like Sleep 
A drowsy wonder over the air; 
And some shall stir in a dim surmise 
Of the Dawn unseen, — awaken, to sink 
Beneath those Waters their hopes long passed,— 
Find the Day imagined there 
Still and perfect, calm at last. 



104 



Wheeling forever around their Sun, 
Grazing its fire with their circling spheres 
Perfected in flame, their soaring done. 
Eternally move the Kings round ways 
Whose orh ordained forever nears 
The symmetries of a Fire they graze: 

All Flames approximate 
Through ever-varying form, 
Through death and shadowed fate 
To one unchanging norm, — 
One awe but dimly guessed, 
One Mind e'er unexpressed 
Through thought's pervading might,- 

Made manifest 
In number's symphonies 
Where thought with being mates; 
Though ordered aeons transform 
Void chaos into law. 
But Flames may feel the awe 
Eternity creates: 

Their endless orbits weave 
For everlasting Night 
A splendid robe of light; 
So clothed in harmonies 
All star and wonder-wrought. 
Her form transcending thought 
That Flames alone perceive, 
Unseen of mortal minds, 
Night looms before the Sun; 
Her flaming splendour blinds 
Our eyes before the Day — 
Whose Sun we shall not know: 
Her robe alone we see, 
105 



And watch its flaming flow 
Down black infinity: 

From Time's eternal loom 
It falls forever, spun 
With warp of aeons to be 
And woof of ageless doom : 
Through all its patterns run 
The wonders of the Sun — 
The hues of hope and dread, 
Pale hate, and love's despair 
Meet, interwoven there. 
The night's immensity 
That frights the timid dead 
Through all, the darkest thread: 
Forever spun, it falls 
And floats o'er years to be, 
A robe of warmth and light 
Where systems blindly stir — 
Unborn in primal night. 
Enshrouds all aeons that were 
In death's chill mystery: 

Its smallest part sublime, 
No mortal's mind has read 
That pattern's grand design; 
One thread of it appeals 
The following mind to know 
Through fate and deeds undone; 
Majestically slow 
Through man-outlasting time. 
With many a secret sign 
Its meanings intertwine. 
So marvels move in vain: 
To man, who wove it not 
io6 



It seems a tangled skein, — 
Unravel ft who can, 
The single thread will show 
The whole of God to man — 
Reveal each hidden plan 
And make the pattern plain. 

She stood afar and saw the Flame Kings weave 

Unsymboled mysteries of light divine. 

Sublime beyond all utterance; alas! 

That she, returning thence must ever leave 

The pattern unrevealed; no feet may pass 

Beyond the Borderland to us: shall we repine, 

Who have her prophecy? Let us resign 

Our souls to Time; the words are hers, not mine. 



107 



NEWTON 

Slowly moves wide wheel on wider wheel, 
Grinding gradual time-outlasting grain — 
System-dust, and finer stuff for brain 

Aeon-born to bid the stars reveal 

Their reaping: as from light the minds congeal 
About the transient atoms, — melt again 
Impalpable as thought in death's inane; 

Not yet is mind and matter's union real. 

Incarnate springs man's archetype, the end 
Of age on adamantine age revolved: 
One awful thought informs the slow decay 

Of heaven on heaven, till their last wonders blend 
In Newton: motion, time's grim mill resolved 
By him, shall never wear his light away. 



io8 



JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 

Inspired of Time's unuttered harmonies, 
Deep knower of the soul unknown to men, 
Forshadower of larger life again, 
Unfallen, grander thro' humanities 
Beyond the clay; supreme in sound 
And symboled mysteries, lone thou hast found 
One hidden chord that shall attune the spheres — 
To drown their chaos thundered harsh in fears 
With melodies subdued, to presage powers 
Undreamed thro' all man's paltry, treasured hours 
Of moment's inspiration: seek we light 
From thee enthroned in solitary might. 

Eternal, solemn, free, thy music peals 

Uncloyed by empty Beauty's languid voice 
Ethereally false: thy fugues rejoice 

In myriad prophecies, whose chant reveals 
Responsive harmonies, till sound unfolds 
In rolling splendor like to God who holds 

A vortex universe in mind of one ; 

Return they ever round thy central sun 
Of theme — grand emblems of eternity 
Enrolling all within their tide, whilst we 

But wonder at the hidden rhythm's beat 

Within the rhythm, strong, all pure, all sweet. 

Could Orpheus' plaintive song of love endure. 
Or would the trees and streams recall those pure 
Delights he sang? Alas — one is forgot. 
For song and singer strayed where song is not, 
That idle passion be forever sure 

Of silence; but, let herb and flesh and stone 



109 



Forever perish, then wilt thou ajone 
Peal out a deathless concord, bonding spheres 

And systems shadowed in thy vaster scheme 
Of death: not thine is change, till all the years 

Of time's reluctant aeons read thy dream, 
That when their sleep-forgotten dawn appears 

In these remembered skies with sudden light, 
The shattered heaven shall hear the deathless word 

Thy music speaks: still voice of stiller night — 
O prophet of all things, — ^we have but heard 

Thy voice behind the sound, to comprehend 

It not, until thy endless music end. 



I lO 



JAMES CLERK MAXWELL 
1831-1879 

Maxwell! fame to make old Scotland proud, 
Sheer genius crystallized in Time and Space, 
Your single mind would glorify a race 

Tho' Burns we lacked an a's unminted gowd; 

True Poet you, outsingin' a' their crowd 

Wi' wee sma' pipin's. Nature showed her face 
To them, — but you, her Heart, and bade you 
trace 

One boundless life through lightning, fire and cloud. 

Discerning Order where all seemed mad Chance, 
You gave the clashing Atoms laws, as Fate 
Immutable; Musician too, with might 
You swept the Threefold Nabla, till elate 
Through harmony, you flashed on Night one glance, 
From smitten chaos gushed eternal Light. 



Ill 



A KING 

"I was: I loved: I am not;" only these 

The words one wished for epitaph. He fought 
His valiant fight, and fell ; a friend unsought 

Befouled this flawless memory: — "The lees 

Of bitter doubt he drained, choked off disease 
And unbelief at last, denied he taught 
Against our scriptures: evil thus unwrought, 

He died a zealot full of psalmodies." 

So perish all who strive to free their kind 
From brainless Custom's brazen tyranny. 

Fight on! devoted band, the human mind 

Through truth shall yet prevail, and reason 

saves : 
Be crowned with thorny life, as even he, 

Kings of men though swine defile your graves. 



112 



WILLIAM THOMSON 

LORD KELVIN 

1 824- 1 907* 

High on the splendid roll of Britain's fame, 
Fused in the very Ether's pulsing core, 
Large as the marvels Science ever bore, 

Writ in blazing letters, lives one name, — 

William Thomson, Intellect's white flame. 
Out from Eternity he strode; before 
His mind Disorder's mountains loomed no 
more, — 

From unimaginable heights he came. 

Into the Dark he passed, and Midnight fled 

Young as the Dawn down Heaven's Milky 

Ways: 
In death, as life, still faithful to his trust 

With Man he lingers, none of him is dead. 

And how has Britain sung her loftiest praise? — 
His dust is mingling now with Newton's dust. 



♦These are the only words on his grave, where he 
lies in Westminster Abbey, beside Newton, 



113 



FATA MORGANA 

In light of opal wonder 
Beyond the Pleiades, 
A spirit wanders lonely 
With stricken face and gray; 
She shines for dead men only 
To haunt their haggard trees, 
And rends all veils asunder 
In shadowings of Day. 

Her face is ever burning, 
Unbeautifully seared 
With furrows wrought by Godhead 
In purposing of Time ; 
But Man is ever mislead 
By signs his forbears feared. 
And dreams of any turning 
From Death alone sublime. 

In void of timeless aether 
She sails alone, unknown, 
Uncharted o'er the vastness 
Of Silence without shore; 
She mourns in dead outcastness, 
A barrenness of stone — 
For heaven sunk far beneath her. 
Unloved forevermore. 

The starry heroes' paeans 
That shake eternal seas. 
Grow dumb as waiting hill-snows. 
When vaster than the Spheres 
Her awful silence echoes 

114 



Unsymboled harmonies, 

Whose chords crash on for aeons. 

And beats, a thousand years. 

Alone she knew the secret 
Of every planet's love. 
Their every fiery passion 
Ere Hell w^as scarce begun; 
But whsLt tho' Chaos crash on, 
All cold she stands above 
The dim, forgotten, far-set 
Dominions of the Sun. 

She casts a pale ensnaring 
By treachery of reeds, 
When some have seen her beckon 
Their souls across the Dark; 
But few may ever reck on 
The deathful dance she leads — 
Men pay for godlike daring 
With bodies grimly stark. 

And vainly some have striven 
To find her light again, 
Yet only gods have known her 
In deathlessness of youth ; 
And they are ever sadder 
Than all the sons of men. 
For them the clouds are riven 
And they beheld the Truth. 

Altho' the Prophets teach her 
In creeds of Better Things, 
And many Christs have perished 
In babbling of her name, 
115 



Yet every truth they cherished 
Has loosed its waxen wings — 
No change can ever reach her 
Eternally the Same. 

And some have promised ages 
In knowledge of all things, 
And some have lied a ceasing 
From knowing of all kind; 
But still a vast increasing, 
Undying Silence rings 
And throbs thro' pulsing ages — 
A mockery of mind. 

If any man has dreamed her. 
His sleep was tinged with death: 
Unveiled she will be never. 
Her being none may tell: 
In life we seek her ever. 
And cease from weary breath 
To know we never gleamed her 
Who lights not heaven nor hell. 



Il!6 



SEEKING 

ON 

Down the River of Light, 
Swift through the meadows of Day, 
On, in the Night's despite — 
On, and away! 

Touch not a nodding grass. 
Stay not for any flower, 
Stealthy as winds we pass — 
Fleet as the breath of an hour. 

Out to the Ocean at last, — 
Out where all winds go free; 
Seeker, — the Bar is passed. 
The Bar and the blossoming lea. 

Down the Ocean to Night, 
Heed not the Siren's lay — 
On, in the Sun's delight. 
On, and away! 

seek; find 

Despise this curious globe inwrought with gold; 

Contemn the wind's untravelled wonderland; 

Shun mazy night's consistencies unplanned; 
Let not our meadow's yellow flowers unfold. 
Or rot afresh in mouths of wormy mould; 

Transmute the stubborn atoms, aye, command 

New elements to glow beneath thy hand: 
Neglect, perform, the End is yet untold. 



117 



Not earth or dusty stars may answer thee, 
Or grim death break thee on a living wheel ; 

No fiend shall nourish hate on hope unsought: 
One part contains the whole, — alone goes free, 
All else an idol, whose blind eyes reveal 

Behind gray dreams of God thine own high 
thought. 

FLEETER THAN TIME 

Who shall outspeed the flight of a year 

Who is swifter than light. 
Who will be Home when the Dawns appear 

Innocent in God's sight? 

Up shall they wing from East and West 
And the mountains under the sea — 

They will arise from their years' unrest 
To sink in infinity. 

With the speed of days shall the years suspire, — 
Who is swift as their wingless feet? 

Fleeter his wings whose soul would aspire 
To halt the flight of the hours most fleet. 

Lo! thou swifter than Godlike Light, 

Hail! bright Messenger age-long sought; 

Thou shalt outstrip the Day and the Night 
Fleeter than Time, O Thought! 

ASLEEP 

O Men! Eternity's forgetful heirs 
What starrier deeps unfathomed have ye known? 
How mournfully thy shallow oceans moan 
An echoed thunder that was never theirs: 

ii8 



One dull oblivion rolls by day despairs 
Athwart the wondrous heavens, a rack of stone 
Around unbounded waters; these alone 
Bar memory from Earth's unanswered prayers. 

All spirit fires are in thy mortal reach; 
A Sun once loved shall never disappear 
From visioned skies, their dawns forever near; 

Then vaster hope may humble life beseech? — 
Afar, Sleep wakefully wandering may hear 
Infinity o'ersurge the dreaming Beach* 

PURE LIGHT 

Opinion's various multicoloured Glass 

Between men's minds and Him, the Changeless 

One, — 
Defiles the changing light and dims the Sun 
We gaze upon as fashions come, and pass. 

Those brightened colours cheat man's pensive eye 
Till every page of years or Nature glows 
With more than suns; a rose no more is Rose, 
And on her cheek rich sunsets never die: 

Is all that perished ever, dead in vain, 

Must Yesterday forever haunt Today 

That light be never white, but gray, 

Or Morning tinged with Evening's brighter stain? 

We stand before the Glass, what shines Behind? 
Who first discerns must take for thought his own, 
Forgetting all, must he fare forth alone 
And meet the Matchless Master Mind to Mind. 

119 



THE MESSENGER 

Hold the flaming torch unshaken, 

Touch the years on feet of fire, 

Down all aisles of dark desire 
Let thy Dawn awaken. 

Kindle space in one keen glance, 

Smile, and ordered systems brighten 

Round those shores where huge wrecks whiten- 

Quicken with the wind of chance. 

Pass those titan suns assembled 

There to spoil thine ageless light; 

Fire thy birthright, Time's thy might 
Ere ever Ether trembled. 

Spun of light, ablaze with dreams 
Let thy hair stream o'er the aeons. 
Sounding stars to deathless paeans 

Where the stillest cluster gleams. 

Glance a moment's flight behind thee: 
All thine aureate glories quenched, 
Flame and hair in darkness drenched. 

Let the dead Night blind thee. 

THE DESIGNER 

Grown old, he laboured at his task unknown. 
No eye beheld that ageless hand outlimn 
The firmament, and no mind compassed him 

Who first imagined heaven a mystic zone 

Of starry meaning; darkened ages flown 
Down empty misery shall not bedim 
His mind, who mocked the radiant seraphim 

And made their constellated eyes his own. 

1 20 



Unravel thou the woven Zodiac 

Who wouldst reveal that worker's wondrous 
dream ; 

What marvels then, fine-spun as primal thought 
May thread the ages, lead thee humbled back 

To God, no wisdom tells ; though death It seem — 

Unweave! — ^with life Is myster)"^ unwrought. 

"ancient of days'^ 

Old beyond all count of uttered years, 
Immovably stare those iron eyes 
Through every Idol man reveres, 
And see the dust; to Him no altars rise. 

Eternity Is but a whim of man, 
The Ancient knows, all days to Him are one; 
No day of years since numbered days began 
Is aught for Him but 'Now'; — begun, 'tis done. 

Where broods this Ancient, solitary, grim 
In timelessness, what awful aspect His? 
In thy unbounded mind behold thou Him, — 
A mind that ever was and shall be, is. 

THE JEWEL 

Flawless, calm, it glows, 
Imperishably wrought 
To perfect symmetries 

He only knows 
Who fashioned It serene 
Through shaping mysteries 
With all his soul asheen 

To peerless thought. 

121 



All rays give up their gold 
Their swifter silver shed 
Within those crystal deeps 

Where hues unfold 
Their woven splendor spun 
In dreams outblazing Sleep's, 
Their colors mingled, one 

In beauty wed. 

Transmuted clarities 
Thence issue newly strange ; 
Unequal beams unite 

Disparities 
In wonder's pure increase; 
There throbs the heart of Light — 
Its maker's masterpiece — 

The soul of Change. 

THE SEEKER 

Bring no laurel branches hither, 

Weave no wreath that shall not wither, 

Raise no pillared pomp to him ; 

He is dead: 
Truth he saw with eyes grown dim. 
Saw her lips move, strove to hear her, 
Closer crept and saw Death near her, — 

Heard her speak; 
Back he turned, his eyes a glory. 
He would tell the Ages' story — 

Hers the praise! 
Little recked he then of fame, 
Purified in life's white flame — 
He beheld her face to face, 

122 



What were man's immortal bays? 
Leave him lonely in this place 
Where his light went out for aye; 
Here were ghostly finger tips 
Laid upon his eager lips — 

She passed by; 
Halted here her Fellow grim — 

His the stilly hand 
Chilling wondrous words unspoken ;- 
Truth had left our hope a token 

Had she willed: 
Scorning us she loved the Seeker, 
Humble we, but he was meeker 

Loving her alone. 
Cover up his life all broken. 

Unfulfilled ; 
What he found is yet unknown. 

Yet unsaid : 

Come, let us go — 
Quit this place, as even She 
With no remembrance; he 

Would have it so. 

POSTERITY 

"Let this imperfect be, 
A Thing of Destiny — 

Time's younger child ; 
Whatever good betide 
Let this pure hope abide 

All unreviled. 

If this be spit upon, 
Its crown of bays but thorn 
When I am gone, 
123 



Take then for heart a stone, 
Depart, and dwell alone 
Without my scorn." 

Thus wrote the ancient seer. 
They put his hope to shame — 

Dishonoured her. 
"Take arms! and shield her fame!" 
How bravely did they jeer! 

He could not stir. 

VOICES 

Aeons and aeons of Voices, weary 
Through age upon age of tears 
Shuddering under the Night, 
Darkening prophecies, dreary 
As emptiness born of delight; 
When will their sobbing cease? 
These are the sounding Years 
Echoing back to peace. 

Crowding the ebon stillness, vaulted 
With heavens of iron above. 
Flitting abysmal glooms 
Where high Death towers exalted 
Over his vassal Dooms — 
Struggle the homeless hosts 
Crowned with remembering love, — 
Forsakenly flutter the ghosts. 

One Voice is solemnly pealing. 
Over all moaning it rings. 
Authority's dominance this. 
The word of its mournful revealing ?- 
124 



''Hearken, ye shadows of bliss, 
Who wantoned on Life's hot Wine, 
Gray spectres of slaves and Kings, 
The Draught ye crave is mine: 

For want of my Water ye languish, 

'The Wine was Fire,' ye weep ; 

Shall I cry an end to thy thirst, 

Or Time put a term to thine anguish? 

More deeply am I accursed. 

For a drop of thy Wine I would give 

The whole of Oblivion's Deep, 

So changed, I might die, and live." 

Unanswered as summer's thunder 
Boasting to fright the sun, 
Eternity's utterance dies: 
Silence, a rarer wonder 
Smites the adamant skies. 
Sears a command unsaid; — 
"When Water and Wine are one 
Shall Death be King of the Dead." 



125 



THE SUBLIME 

Islands of stars in the infinite Deep, 
Foam as a universe blown on the night, 
Eddying ethers that wheel into being 
All on one solemn majestical sweep 

Of the pinions of light, 
Gathering might in their mystical motion 
Round the dominions of God's decreeing, — 
Float as mere spume on a fathomless ocean 
Unsounded by space, unbounded in time: 
The lift of those wings is a symphony rolled 
Under stars as dust in the vibrant void, 
And their fall is a fanning of music sublime-- 
Beating to atoms all motes destroyed, 
So the infinite ocean is foamless and pure — 
For ages these hushes of darkness endure, — 

Till the wings once more 
An aeon from under all nothingness, lift 
With vortex whirl on the brooded shore, 
Islands and foam in a spinning drift; 
And the pause of those pinions ere they descend 
Is eternity save to One alone. 
For the ruined worlds round reeling suns 
But wail an echo the waters have known, 
And the stars are dark in their fiercest flame — 
Their wars extinct, their endings told. 
Their harmonies only a dream-heard song 
Forgotten with dawn, remembered with sleep 
Ere ever they woke or time had an end : 
Once more the fall of all motion stuns 
The foam to dust, and the glittering throng 
Of motes to nothingness whence all came; 
So ever those makers of melody chime — 
Rise and fall in a timeless rhyme, — 

126 



Being to void, note by note, 

Void to being remembering naught. 

All unheard but in God's one mind 

That wills all motion, that thinks each mote, 

That lifts the pinions of life o'er death, 

That speeds all death on the wings of thought: 

Change outlasted by Him alone, 

The dust may dream but a note of the song 

That is heard by Him forever and ever; 

Though the dream of the Stars outlast the night, 

And the foam remember its natal tide. 

Though in seeming of more than ethereal might 

The eddying atoms whirl and abide 

In the infinite Deep, 
Though the chorusing galaxies march along 
The chasms of space their wars dissever 

From light for aeons, — 
Eternity's face is never revealed — 
Unseen 'neath the beat of descending wings, — 
Unheard is the song a universe sings, 

Unechoed that victory's paeans 
The red stars peal as they blacken and die: 
From One alone is Time not concealed, 
And only One whose wings brush by 

Untouched forever and ever; — 
One is the mystery vaster than all of them, — 
Pinions and foam, a galaxy's diadem 
Blazing its noon in the shadow of Night, — 
These but the shape of change. One is the soul. 
Finite the universe. One is the whole; 
Maker of mind and its infinite light. 

Comprehensible never, 

One is sublime — 
Time! 



127 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

A Valley sleeps beyond the Western Sea 
And storied Isles of Dream, a glade of peace, 

There Life is but a fading memory 

Where hungry Death can reap no rich increase. 

No sombre vale of brooding Night is this, 
Here, azure morning ever stills the air, 

No dreaming Dawn awaits the kindling kiss 
Of some long-errant Sun to make her fair: 

A pearly sheen of changing heavens instills 
Immortal hope for larger Day, unborn 

To all the Valley, save those fearless hills 
That reach like gods above the mystic Morn 

To rend out secrets from the cryptic Sky 

Unstarred, — deep sunk beyond those chasms 
Night 

Reveals a breathing-span, then, thundering by 
Imperial, o'erwhelms in hosts of light. 

But should the giant Hills prevail o'er Day 

To hurl him down, or yield the Stars to Morn, 

The Valley Dwellers still shall go their way. 
For Beauty lives to put their fears to scorn: 

The rolling meadows shine with daffodils, 
And all the brooks with ruddy marigolds. 

Till hyacinths, empurpling shadowy hills 
Expire, where every tender bud enfolds 



128 



Her petaled prayer of peace, that would not fade 
But gently yield to noon the fragrant soul 

In sighs, — a breath of incense loving-strayed 
From life's last altar, white upon the knoll. 

There drowse no browsing flocks; the plaintive 
songs 

Of birds are stilled o'er silent-swirling streams, 
Swift-sinking to their tryst with billowy throngs 

Where all forget their ripples' broken dreams. 

There wandering lanes o'ergreen the meads, to lose 
Their ways in breezy vales of rose and may, 

And bower their shade where ever-early dews 
Recall dead tears for some old yesterday. 

No maiden waits her lover in those lanes, 
Where never ecstasies of summer pale 

At autumn's chill; no rustic lute complains 
The broken tryst with low, unhappy wail. 

No lover haunts the glens with broken sighs, 

Or tramples down the patient corn, with quick. 

Impatient step, to greet young April's eyes 

With pleading hope, by some sweet smelling rick 

Of autumn's clover: there, no soaring song 
That thrilled the Harvest Home, must break 

In anguished melody with winter's long. 
Unlovely cry for loves that can forsake. 

For there, the shades of earthly love forget 

Their earthiness, and fear no breath of shame — 

Late chill to penitence of vain regret — 
Ah, There, Dishonor is an empty name. 

129 



These phantomed memories of men are not 
Unloved, for they may never feel the keen 

Unfriendliness of Death, alone, forgot 
By loving ministry, in couches green 

And v^^hite with fleeting pledge of grass and flow^ers, 
Deflowered by some once loved and trusting hand 

To ease the barren grief of bitter hours. 
That love and hope, but never understand. 

Not theirs the vanity in toys of life. 

Or vainer crowns of death ; they hoard no wreaths 
Of deathless bay, or pictured scroll of strife 

Long fought and done; and rust is in their 
sheaths. 

No flicker false as haunts the stagnant marsh, 
No lying spark of God's forbidden fire 

Enkindles men to die, and stare the harsh 
Awakening after death of false desire. 

None seek to beggar Miser Fame, that dust 
Of charlatan defile the dust of seer, 

And no ethereal love and loveless lust 

Seem one in death, — desire dwells never here. 

No wistful eye looks forth for sympathy, 
Each wanders with himself in utter rest 

From fearful hope and tearless misery 
Forever; here the worst is as the best. 

^ ^ VR ?|c *ft tIc ^ V 

And if one w^andering there a day, perchance 
A year, or grayer centuries, may sigh 

In thankfulness, then with an upward glance 
Perceive the soundless war of hills and sky: 

130 



And like a wounded warrior, dream that he 
Knew battles long ago, he yet may learn 

That secret, nameless thro' Eternity, 
And leave the Valley, never to return. 

Then, if he choose to cast to Earth the years 
Of happy, thoughtless peace, athirst to drink 

The lasting draught, a clouded hand appears 
To point the hidden slope to that last brink 

Where grass and lilies halt reluctantly 

Before the hard, forbidding sands, curved up 

Like scimitars unsheathed relentlessly, 
To guard the secret of the Master Cup. 

Who treads the hidden slope must walk alone, 
Unmoved by sudden hope or any fear. 

He may not question air, or fire, or stone, 

No answer give they, and no hope dwells here. 

Unmoved, calm lilies wait for all who come, 
Unmoved, the royal Iris lifts her head, 

A prophetess, aye prophetess, but dumb, 
Her latest word of hope fore'er unsaid. 

There is no footprint on that barren rim. 

For he who thirsts must throw all hope or dread 

To Life: the subtle fire is all of him 

That treads that slope, and all that wills to tread. 

Thence rushingly the sweet and bitter flow 
A mingled harmony of life and death; 

A little span of peace, and all must go 

In longing there, to blow with fluttering breath 



131 



Those eager ripples back: then plunging deep 
The dusty lips, once drink, and all is done; 

Save poppied meads of dreams, or hemlock sleep; 
Grim Starless Night, or Life's resplendent Sun. 



132 



PERCHANCE 

How many days of sheer content 

May any mortal know; 
Is there one moment yet unspent 

To buy us aught but woe? 

Uncertain all the squandered Past, 

Its reckoning falls due; 
Before a veil we pause aghast, — 

It hides? — ^would God we knew. 

All patterned with a gray design 

Of seas and sand the veil; 
Put forth a hand, all hope resign, — 

Our trembling fingers fail. 

.So troubled here; Beyond, how fair! 

Our fearful prayer is this — 
Perchance there rests 'neath earth's despair 

One second's flawless bliss. 



133 



ANOTHER DAY 



INVITATION 



Come up the little hill with me, 
We'll take the Dawn by quick surprise, 
We'll wake the winds all down the lea — 

The birds on yonder tree. 
And rouse the dragon-flies: 

The dew yet slumbers on the vine 
And sleep is on the violet's eyes; 
Their revels done, the moths come home 

And creep beneath their leaves: 
Our joy of life is cool, keen wine. 
The stilly air its crystal cup; 
Come, climb the little hill with me 
And see the first ray tip the sheaves 
With golden grain: awake, come up! 

WAITING 

Far from the town 

On the spring-green lane 

Where the grass waves fresh — 

Not young, but grown. 

We'll see those Hills — clear Hills — our own; 

Dust of our dust and flesh of our flesh — 

We'll see you again when we lay us down. 

What spoke the thrush, — 
A croak for the town? 
But the Hills are out there 
Let us watch them till dark; 

Let us wait till the sunset comes down with the 
lark — 

134 



(He sings with the Sun till day brings him dowrt) ; 
We'll tarry, — sweet care! — 
Till the hills' night-hush. 

WEAVING 

Irrevocably every dream 

Takes wing with wakened Day; 
Forever dies the transient gleam 

Of Sleep's unearthly ray: 
No risen Star may ever wake 

Those dusky plumes 
That night's dim Sun illumes, 
Or stir ethereal deeps to shake 

False light away. 

Adown the night's forgotten tombs 

Stalks one huge shape of gray, — 
A spectre Day whose shadow looms 

Immense on Light's aflFray; 
Dull Ethers quell his ghostlier beam. 

And Suns forsake 
His wings as Dawns unmake 
Sleep's mystery in wefts that seem 

Time's interplay. 

AT DAWN 

Far, far away the silver city lay, 
Far, so far beneath the morning hill 

It was a dream. 
And Dawn gazed everywhere, save there; 
All round the sky a Day's wide wings hung still ; — 
The lower heaven shone one azure gleam. 
Pure as a crystal dreaming summer air, 

Clear and keen as the risen day. 



Deep, deep beneath the Morning's gleaming brow 
Eternal beauty glowed in godlike thought, 

Unchangeably serene; 
With sudden gust the freshened wind arose. 
Awoke, and strove to speak, yet uttered nought; 
Its chilly breath revealed no god unseen; 
The jealous dawn concealed what lone night knows 

The city dreamed, and suffers now. 

TO THE WIND 

Come, gently healing breeze from yonder hill, 
Forget the yearning grass a breathing spell 
And sigh but here ! forsake the lily-bell. 
Let every nodding violet dream thee still 
A fragrance unreturning; whisper, fill 
The dreary air with balmy peace, and tell 
Our drooping blooms a tale of asphodel, — 
Let them believe beneath thine airy will. 

Blow once again thou ever-freshening wind; 
Bring hither heaven's unbounded atmosphere 
Those azure wings of hope's eternal year: 
Unchained of life, by death still unconfined. 
Forever free from any chilling fear, — 
Touch thou with ghostly lips man's doubting mind. 

THEN 

Over the Desert and ever away 

From Vales with their luring waters; 

Up from the Meadows that smile, "Oh stay! 
Rest, and be happy here!" 



J36 



Beneath and afar the Cities of Men, 
Unreal as the walls of a vision 

Vanish in Air: shall we miss them then, 
Lonely on yonder Peak? 

Starrier dews shall freshen and bless 
Our eyes, than brighter the meadows; 

Then shall Dawns walk in loveliness 
Over the Mountain Tops. 

WINGS 

There was fire in that western sky, 
And a sky-deep sheen on the sand 
As we watched the last gulls fly 
To the sunset's brighter land; 

Then the waves curled clear and green 
And hue on hue paled fast, — 
'Twas night, or the pause between 
Two days when aeons rush past. 

An eternity stilled each crest, 
No thunders crashed on the beach. 
Would not those last wings rest 
Within ken of our vision's reach? 

Then rustled small waves at our feet 
In floods of forgotten things. 
Shall we see where all waters meet 
Still visions of striving wings? 



137 



ONE PURE GIFT 

Free-handed Life brought natal gifts to me, 
Four precious things, all meet for gods, I ween: 
A golden Casket holding Hope unseen; 
An Emerald, clear green as April Sea, 
Whose light was Youth shone purely, steadily; 
A queenly Pearl, with softly-changing sheen. 
Betokened Love, yea, all deep Love may mean; 
And last, the Crystal Sphere of Memory. 

Iron-fingered Death snatched sacrifice from me; 
His whistling breath shrilled mercilessly keen, — 
'Give up three things, one mayst thou keep between 
My tempest's wintry poverty and thee:' 
The Sphere I hid, — by it all else unclean 
And vain; this visions all Eternity. 

IN THE FIELDS 

Far from those happier hills we roamed. 

Deep in the Dawn beyond. 
Under all night and sundered from day 

Here let us lingering rest: — 
Far from our beach where the long tides foamed — 

Where white birds cleft the spray — 
Rest, they are memories faintly fond 

And the sky's wide fields are best. 



138 



Gaze in the crystalline depths of all light, — 

Time is a jewel now; 
Over all waters the lost wings shine 

And their mystery weaves a spell 
That only a ghost may learn aright, — 

Hush, 'tis the voice we loved so well : 
There flames a sun on your splendid brow 

To kindle the star on mine. 



139 



THEY AND WE 

Thy pallid land is but a shade 

Ye happy things of Sleep, 
Unreal, ye never seem to weep 

Or dream the day afraid 
To banish thee. What boy or maid 

Among you knows that woe 
Is not a dream: ye cannot weep. 
Whose only sorrow is to know 

Too much of joy, and reap 
The kindnesses pure love can sow 
Unsparingly: 'tis but a shade. 

But they who haunt the starry glade 

Waft us this message low: 
O men unreal, why must ye weep — 

Unhappy men, dismayed 
By every changing wind, ye weep 

False tears for hate to keep : 
Though many sorrows come, they go 
Forever, down the dusky deep 
Unwept, if ye will have it so: 

Thy land is but a pallid shade. 



140 



CRYSTAL VISION 

Full opal sheen of ten soft-orbed moons 
Broods whitely o'er yon Shadowland unknown 
To wakefulness; beneath those clouds, lagUncs 
For salty leagues enshine the seaward dunes 
Where splendid night, empearled in misty zone, 
Outshines on sand the sea; one light alone, 
One soundless harmony of sound attunes 
One crystal world of beams to flawless tone 
Along that beach where never sound has flown — 
Where, drowned in light the day forgotten swoons. 

Behold ! within the crystalled depths, a cloud, 
A sooty dew steals dankly o'er the sea — 
The soul of dissolution rends her shroud, 
And two moons die; foul tempests howl aloud 
Vast rage repressed through past eternity 
O'er thundered waters, paused, as they would flee 
Resounding hell with sky-lost crags downbowed 
To blast the sea; the dead moons welter free 
In grim twin wrack; black, all utterly 
Destroyed, they mimic Death, as still, as proud. 

Undimmed their splendors, eight moons glow serene. 
All undismayed tho' sad; along the land 
Huge shadows vaster grow, till shapes unseen 
Ere ruin crashed, awake; these move between 
Quick-quaking dunes and narrow foam-blown sand, 
Majestically move to some command 
Unheard when light was one; immense, unclean. 
Their forms obsess the sand, — a moveless band, 
Polluters, shadow-breeding; swart they stand. 
Around their feet no blackened blade shall green. 



141 



Far athwart long-calm lagunes, awake 
The new strange breezes, lift the light, and blow 
Seaward to wond'ring waves, — from salty brake 
Of rush and reed their whispered rustlings take — 
To sigh their fresh brine breath caressing low 
With laughs of little waves; the breezes know 
What crests those land-locked waters longed to 

shake 
In wind-wide freedom round the surging flow 
Of all the tides; the strange sighs wander slow 
Across the lake they loved but to forsake. 

With chilly breath a shuddered breeze creeps near 
To pass the huddled bulks of crouching doom 
Whose monstrous hideousness o'erflows the mere 
Between the dunes and sea ; — a whistle clear . 
And sharp as death sucked in, — the breeze's tomb 
Is one vile giant's life; — he rips the womb 
Of groaning Night, and staggering, strives to rear 
His late-raped soul to heaven; his eyes presume 
Creative Might, till, glaring through the gloom 
He burns to life a brother's huger fear. 

Their titan blacknesses blot out the main, 

As leaping up, the godless brothers glare 

Red mutual hate; can bonded birth restrain 

That crimson murder rushing through each brain? 

Gigantic sinews heave as down they tear 

From skies outraged two startled moons ; they swear 

Destruction, hurl the moons and miss: again 

They drag two moons from heaven's divine despair. 

And headward heaving, strike; red brains, and hair 

Stream tangled down the air in ghastly rain. 



142 



Tranquility is but an aged dream 

For all the sea, where hissing, sultry shrill 

The two missed spherets sinking gleam 

Their rapine through the rain; the waters teem 

With writhing lives of death-begotten will 

To breed and thrive; the dunes are starkly chill 

Beneath huge discord wrought by fourfold beam — 

The perfect harmony of ten is still 

To wake no more, and murder broods his fill 

Forgetful; light may die but not redeem. 

Each lonely dune shines now a whitened mound, 

A desolation; all the skies loom white 

Their ghostliness, and slow decays confound 

Fast-aging years; lone harmony is drowned 

Down seas of chaos, throbbing through the night 

Dull-pulsed death; yet four moons leper-bright 

As hope still tramp the heavens with dogged round 

Of everlasting ancientness, till light 

Outliving time, expires, and all the sight 

Of God is two moons dead, — his gaze refound. 

Intolerably blackened glares each sphere — 
Each orb of God that erstwhile hurled the fire 
'Gainst crag and tree; now sightless, yet severe 
The blackness withers down the new-sown year 
To stubble, dulled all motion, stilled the choir 
Of perfect soundlessness : may two aspire 
Undaunted still, to hint those eyes a cheer 
From moon-reflected dawns, — ^will He require 
Their light? A flash, — the twain expire, 
And down the aether blackness pierces clear. 



143 



Speak! — who on pinioned dreams of life would 

soar, — 
Have His eyes known all things and all life slain ? 
Ah, surely winds have died this night before — 
Hark ! rustling by, they whisper 'nevermore' ; 
Is all the fear and pomp of death in vain — 
The levelled dunes bring back the years again, 
Their every shadow laves the dawns of yore 
Where no bird utters now her searching plain 
Along the cliffs and spray-forsaken main: — 
Lone everlasting night entombs the shore. 



144 



THE TEMPLE STEPS* 

There loomed a Dream at Slumber's lonelier Gate, 

I live, and hold the vision of a dream 

A shrine inviolate, — 

Unshaken through the Ages' troubled thunder 

No death shall rend my dream and soul asunder, — • 

I trod where suns by hoaried millions gleam 

Like starlit sand around the Shore of Space; 

Here dawned my deathless dream — 

In regions all-transcending human wonder, — 

Was't but a vision, — sinks that awful Place 

In Time, in Space, akin to God or Fate 

Or Either's unseen Face? 

Eternal as the worm that dieth never, 

Outflaming Milky Ways that flame forever — 

Through Gods it visioned forth a vaster State, 

Create in Thought, who mingles all, begot 

Alone, without a Mate; 

No god shall ever dream and mind dissever. 

Eternity was but a flowerful Plot 

Whereon I knelt, — the Ether, distant haze, 

And Space, a vale forgot; 

The pillared firmament showed shallow-founded, — 

An atom circumscribed and death-surrounded ; 

Unsunned, Immensity's immortal rays 

Pulsed swiftly through the star-dust, throbs of Time 

Whose aeons died, — but days 

Upon that Place no Age has ever bounded: 

'Twas not the Heart of Light, white fire sublime. 



*(Some may be interested in knowing that this is an 
attempt to describe a dream of extraordinary vivid- 
ness which the writer has had four times at intervals 
separated by from one to ten years.) 

145 



Enkindling Chaos, twinkling clouds of suns 
Like midnight's wintry rime; 
'Twas keener life than creeps with dull pulsation 
Through nebulae that blind each constellation — 
It slew the sudden Dawn whose breaking stuns 
Void darkness into Motion; through Night's veins 
Light's life but sluggish runs — 
Inevitably crawls to slow cessation. 

A swifter Day than stealthy Time attains 
Broke blazing down in torrents more than light — 
Besprent the starry Plains, — 

Thus brake the Dawn that fired my living vision — 
A flame that mocked the Suns with proud derision; 
Celestial rains ne'er freshened Heaven's sight 
For seraph's eyes, as leaped those Plains to Day 
From dull and day-like white — 
Then was Night cleft from Day with keen decision ; 
Before that Dawn the face of Light went gray, 
'Twas absolute, all days departed thence — 
Their false fires flamed away; 
I left that Place, and lonely, sought a Higher, 
(The Dayspring thundered upward, 'Mind, as- 
pire!') 
I poised above a vaster Eminence 
Than sheer Space rears against the cinder-wrack 
Of ruined clusters dense 
With blackened stars and globes of titan fire, 
With galaxies and unborn worlds yet black, 
I paused, until the Farther Crags unseen 
Should hurl the Day-Tide back; — 
Alone I waited, watched, and never trembled — 
The spirit of a thought my dream resembled, — 
What hoped my soul to see, — the sudden sheen 
Of life on tombed systems, or the sum 

146 



Of all gray Time hath been, — 

The marching of a Universe for Death assembled? 

Perchance deep Everlastingness I'd plumb — 

Reach under perished shoals of Dawns, and sound 

Infinities to come; 

No dream it seemed, else had terror taken 

Wing, and left my soul by hope unshaken ; 

What epoch, ere one boundless wave swept round 

All vaulted heavens that gemmed the blazing Plain 

Like jewels on frosty ground — 

What lapse awaited I, by years forsaken. 

Is compassed not by any vision's brain; 

The slowly numbered aeons since Time began 

Delay its name in vain: — 

From Crags unseen I saw the Day-Tide brighten, 

Flung high in riot billows, poised to frighten 

Down deep Night the puny mind of man — 

Irrevocably drown his soul in sleep 

As only light-floods can, — 

Down Slumber's depths no Dawn shall ever lighten. 

An opal is an image of the Deep, 

A sudden sea of lustrous green and blue 

Where skyward billows leap — 

Where wizard waters welter flame encrested 

O'er crags and pools by demon-dreams infested, — 

Where ever blooms the smouldering foam anew 

In multitudes of wandering moons aflame 

Through clouds of crimson dew, — 

An opal is an Ocean fire-invested. 

'Twas as a Sea of seas the Day-Tide came, 
Each drop an opalascent Ocean, vast, 
Devouring Number's name; 

147 



Should He who knows all Oceans rise, and shatter 

Their mountained waters down to drops and scatter 

Flame-rains of opal down the vacant Past — 

Then, will each drop a Sea inseparate — 

The Day-Tide would outlast 

In fire that Universe of Light-born matter. 

Should all young years who ever rose, belate 
Their dawns to one supremest hour, should all 
The tides one moon await 
To flow and roll in unisons eternal — 
A harmony of orbed flame supernal 
O'er time and shaken Time's lone fall, — 
Their mingled fires might not outflame the Tide, 
Or their swift greens recall 
On changing azure any field so vernal 
As one Tide-Blossom, shimmered, opened wide 
And calm in amethystine scintillance — 
Infinity's bright Bride; 

My vision sprang to birth, the Tide swept nearer. 
Its cloud-hewn beauty blazed in symbols clearer; 
I saw Day's luminescent Armies glance 
Through sinuous evolutions, folding spheres 
And fires in mazy dance — 

'Twas more than movement, — Motion's Mind aus- 
terer. 

O lonely Tomb that lonelier Thought uprears 
Against colossal Night, what tongue may tell 
Thy mystery to Dream's e'er wakeful ears. 
For in thy vaults, unborn those Lights must wan- 
der 
Forever lost, unquenchably they squander 
Time's mighty meanings o'er thy blackened hell 
Where Chaos broods his undisputed sway— • 

148 



All desolate the swell 

Of thoughts a Universal Soul might ponder; 

Return, immortal-visaged Day, — 

Thy Tomb a Temple was, an undreamed Fane, 

Outlasting quick decay 

Of ageless marble myth and god-beclouded. 

Whose every atom spins a richly crowded 

World of memories; flow back again. 

Eternal Day-Tide, ebb within my reach 

On yonder deathless Plain — 

Where first I knelt, all sense and sleep-enshrouded, 

Build up once more those Temple-Steps, Oh teach 

My eager dream what feet have ever trod 

Infinity's calm Beach — 

What Beings ever watch the Day-Tide breaking, — 

What Pilgrims leave the Temple-steps, forsaking 

Light, to tread with holier feet unshod 

Those hallowed Halls that glowed as dreams beyond 

And shadowed into God, — 

Perfect, mystical, serene awaking. 

Alas ! that dreams go blind ; full Day-Tide dawned ; 
The marching symbols ranged Immensities 
As if a ghostly wand 
Appointed all to Order, slowly bringing 
Purpose out of Chaos, dayward flinging 
Flocculi that ranged their opal seas 
In level lines of clouded fire ablush 
With Dawn's bright Mysteries; 
Then, swift as Thought, — all leaden dreams out- 
winging — 
I saw the Temple Steps leap out, a rush 
Of vision absolute from tumbled smoke — 
Aflame their crimson flush; 

And down those Steps the Universe descended — 

149 



A moment seen, a moment comprehended ; 

In soundless majesty all Time awoke 

And showed One Face; the Steps of All alone 

I saw; frail vision broke — 

I fled an End of what has never ended. 

Why should my sleep be troubled with a moan 

For One I saw not,— life go bowed with care 

Fpr fatal hope unknown; 

I dreamed the Pulse that stunned to moving being 

Stars and dust of Stars was Thought's Decreeing, — 

Imagining sublime of God's despair — 

And Beauty everywhere 

Brake as the Day Unseen yet ever seeing; 

So, when the Dawn at Death's last solemn Gate 

Outfires all Stars and every paler dream — 

Shall I, disconsolate 

Gaze back upon my soul with chill regretting — 

Curse impotently clouds of blind forgetting 

Enshadowing all, save one reluctant beam 

Where still those Temple Steps fling back the Day, 

And Reason waits her Mate, 

Calm in the risen Sun that knows not setting? 



r5o 



UNDER THE TREES 

Under those trees by the well-loved lake, 

Under the mournful firs 
Sweeter than mirth in their whispering sigh, 

Will I wait till the midnight stirs, 
I will watch till the owl and his moon awake 

To conquer the star-proud sky. 

Friends of my care-free schoolboy days — 

Trees I have loved so well, 
Faithful alone is your passionless voice 

In your music's mysterious swell — 
Changeless of all to the boy's fond ways 

When manhood cast his choice. 

Ever alone of all have I kept 

Your memory stainless, clear; 
Men may sing and their women may weep, — 

Human or selfish their every tear. 
Petty their songs with their woes unwept, — 

Eternal those tears you keep; — 

Kin of the Stars and the Milky Way 

Under whose glow you shine, 
Trees most mystical, prophesy — 

When shall your song be mine. 
May I never fling back the Infinite Day 

As your tops reflect the Sky? 



151 



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